Australia exploit West Indies' varied faults

"I think we can forget sometimes that it's not always about the contest, it's sometimes about seeing great cricketers put on a show, and we certainly saw that at the WACA."

With these words on ABC radio during the Perth Test, the Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland made a pre-emptive apology for what was likely to be witnessed in the series against West Indies in the prime weeks of summer, Christmas and New Year holidays. Not a contest, but an exhibition.

The decision to place Jason Holder's hapless, harried tourists under the brightest spotlight of an Australian season has seemed wrong-headed for some time - certainly over the past three years in which New Zealand, the team handed the "curtain-raiser" series in November, have risen significantly from a low base of performance to become legitimate challengers to most opponents. They showed as much in Adelaide, a close-run thing for Steven Smith's men.

There was nothing of the sort to be witnessed in Hobart, on a beautiful, shimmering day when the Derwent River glistened behind Bellerive Oval. For all the stirring rhetoric offered by Sir Curtly Ambrose two days out from the start of the series, the reality of West Indies in their current state was shown rather more accurately when the coach, Phil Simmons, had clean-bowled the reserve batsman Shane Dowrich with a throwdown in the nets. This was meant to be West Indies' stronger suit: by day's end they had conceded the most runs in a single day in the team's long history.

For much of their recent past, West Indies have specialised in performing for a few days of a Test match, only to give the game away by being unable to sustain that effort. Day one of this match showed that syndrome in accelerated form - after Jerome Taylor and Kemar Roach bowled a fine first two overs and created a chance, the rest of the day turned into the most unedifying pageant of shoddy bowling, casual fielding and uninspired captaincy.

Their day was epitomised by the contribution of Shannon Gabriel. Chosen on match morning in the expectation that his pace would be disconcerting for some of the Australia batsmen, he delivered an expensive opening spell before briefly finding his line to beat Joe Burns between bat and pad. Later, having bowled only 10 overs at a cost of 59, Gabriel left the field complaining of ankle pain, and is set to have scans overnight. His best was all too fleeting.

In the morning, Smith's side had permitted Holder's collective to think they were actually in the contest by giving up three wickets. Burns and Smith each got decent individual deliveries, and David Warner was somewhat unluckily snaffled down the leg side on the stroke of lunch - his innings having already set the breakneck pace of Australia's first innings, even if he was unable to carry through in the fashion of the WACA Ground.

Yet, even in their brief moments of ascendance, the tourists were unable to use these wickets as a way into the Australian middle order, even though it was the exact scenario Ambrose had foreshadowed in his imperial, threatening tones. Instead Adam Voges and Shaun Marsh were able to gallop away, piercing porous fields repeatedly and peeling off a pair of sparkling hundreds for a crowd of approximately 5,927.

It had already been well established that Voges enjoyed these opponents. His debut hundred in Dominica had been an innings of rare quality against a team that had been far more lively thanks to the regular incisions made by Devendra Bishoo, a skillful leg spinner. Bishoo is in Hobart but was left out for Jomel Warrican, who had caused Voges a brief moment's pain in Antigua during that tour's warm-up fixture by getting him lbw when he thought his Test spot was pending.

This time, Voges confronted a scenario not quite so fraught as that he faced at Windsor Park, and his batting rhythm was of the same metronomic kind that took him to a prolific Sheffield Shield aggregate last summer. He took a heavy toll on Warrican, tucking away four boundaries from one over, while also feasting on a liberal supply of balls delivered short and wide of the off stump - England had never been this generous to his pet cutting zone.

"It's fairly different to Dominica, the conditions were fairly different, there wasn't a lot of spin today," Voges said. "It's a pretty good wicket, I thought our openers did a terrific job to get us off the mark, I think we were 70 after 10 overs and that really set the tone for the day. To come in when I did, we lost Smudger and Davey in pretty quick succession, but we put on 120 in the first session and West Indies were a little inconsistent with their lengths today, and we were able to capitalise on that."

Marsh, meanwhile, carried on with the certainty and improved defensive technique he first exhibited in Adelaide, albeit against bowling of a lesser standard than that provided by New Zealand. Only once all day was he beaten outside off stump, by a Holder delivery that moved away off the seam. Otherwise he presented the broadest of bats to clatter the ball repeatedly through the covers. He has created a dilemma for selectors obliged to recall Usman Khawaja when he returns to fitness ahead of Boxing Day.

"I was pretty relaxed today, and with Adam going so well and scoring so freely that got me going as well," Marsh said. "I felt really confident coming into the game, I was just happy to get a good start and build on that, and to get my first hundred in Australia I'm very happy with that. I definitely feel comfortable at this level, I've just got to keep working on my consistency. I'm really enjoying being around the guys at the moment, they've made me feel really welcome. I've got to keep working hard, keep enjoying it and keep having fun out there."

As Peter Siddle, Voges and Smith had all stated during the week leading up to this day, it is not for Australia's players to worry about the troubles of the team they are facing. It is their job to be professional, ruthless even, and that is exactly how Voges and Marsh performed. In doing so they are exposing the many and varied faults built up over a long period of time in West Indian cricket, exacerbated by the Twenty20 age but primarily created by the world's most dysfunctional cricket governance.

As one-sided as day one appeared, it is better for the future of cricket in the Caribbean that such events force true introspection and thought about the game in the region, not only from West Indians but also from the administrators of other, more prosperous nations.

That takes us back to Sutherland's interview in Perth, where he stated the old line that these are problems beyond the remit of CA. "It's something we don't have control over," he said. "The West Indies are going through a difficult period in terms of performance."

Indeed they are. But if other nations do not work at restoring the cricket strength of a region that was once so central to the game, there are likely to be many more days like this, and many more crowds propped up by school children admitted to the ground for free.