The chances are the England - West Indies game will end in a draw, but if play had occurred it was very unlikely that the West Indies would have won.

The fact is that the West Indies never looked likely to bowl England out in either Innings, England could have taken twenty wickets had Hoggard been fit and the weather not intervened.

I genuinely can't see the West Indies really challenging England in this series. Yet this was an England team destroyed by Australia 5-0. How many personnel changes were made - the keeper and through injury the Captain - and I don't feel these made that much difference to the potential result.

So what we have is two massive class chasms and it goes like this

Australia




England
Pakistan
India
Sri Lanka
South Africa
New Zealand


West Indies
Bangladesh
Zimbabwe



At the moment I can't see the West Indies challenging anyone but the bottom two, meanwhile the middle teams are essentially scraping it our for second place.

With Australia's dominance probably likely to last, despite recent retirements, will this mean that essentially Test Cricket becomes a very boring and predictable game? Or is there any in the middle group capable of challenging for the No 1 slot?

Until we see how Australia perform (as a test team) without the services of McGrath and Warne it's difficult to ascertain whether or not Australia's dominance will last, or how far ahead of the pack they actually still are. It may be that the chasm you mention is not nearly as deep as it used to be when Australia resume hostilities against Sri Lanka in November. I'm not saying the Sri Lankans can win that series, but it will be interesting to see how much of the former dominance is still retained.

On the batting front they are a class apart with Ponting and Hussey in particular, but their bowling attack was heavily reliant on the two aforementioned bowlers to create the pressure under which the other bowlers in the side thrived. Stuart Clark admittedly has the potential to replace McGrath but Warne is irreplaceable. MacGill at 36 is no spring chicken and isn't in Shane's class - there was even mention that Brad Hogg (also 36) might usurp him for the spinner's position.

Interesting times ahead.

No FF, because there are plenty of teams in the middle tier (six actually) to create close and interesting contests amongst themselves, even if none of them are good enough to challenge the Aussies.

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Australia routed England 5-0 with the services of McGrath and Warne. With both players retired and the likes of Gillespie, Martyn, Lehmann, Langer and the Waugh brothers retired, Australia should be beatable. I don't think Australia is that far ahead of the pack. Gilchrist and Hayden will be gone within two years. Surely, they should be beatable, then.

I don't believe any team is unbeatable. Neither did England in 2005.

Well, quite. Australia are streets ahead of the pack on paper, and that's a difficult one to argue against. But even from that position they are beatable, and, as Mike suggests, the personnel changes of the next couple of years will surely bring them closer.

At the second chasm, well - Zimbabwe are no-hopers for the time being and, as anyone who has read my comments here over the past couple of years will know, I would not be doing a thing to help them in current political circumstances. Bangladesh will not be across the chasm forever though, and I sincerely hope that West Indies are only there temporarily. One of the things which will stop test cricket becoming predictable and boring will be the wait for them to close that gap and the hope every time they play a series that this will be the one.

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Not sure about that FF, I would say without hesitation that the West Indies have got the most out of this draw.

Even with Hoggard missing, Harmison is England's premier bowler and along with Plunkett and Panesar made no impression at all in the truncated West Indies second innings.

The West Indies will be pleased because they have held their own despite having had no match practice, this series is far from dead IMO.

We don't know just how good Australia are - because the standard of the rest is not that great.

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Ern

I don't know how you have come to that conclusion, we got 550+ in the first innings and declared with 5 wickets down, and until we started looking for quick runs in the second innings, the West Indies didn't look like they would take more than 5 wickets again...

The West Indies were never in a position to win this Test.

Their second innings did not make our bowlers look great, but we were down to just three, they had to bowl all day Saturday, part of Sunday and then again today, so no wonder they looked a little off the boil.

Still think there is a huge chasm between the West Indies and the best of the rest, while the Ashes demonstrated how far all the other sides have to go.

Batting was easy - the West Indies scored 400+
The Windie's bowlers were undercooked - ludicrous that a team can go into a major Test series with no preperation.

True, but judging how England bowled - neither were they IMO.

It was not the West Indies fault that the England front line bowlers thought they were bowling at a set of stumps at the Oval - only Panesar and Collinwood bowled at all.
England were a bowler down, but I have heard people say Collingwood is a bowler - so not quite as bad a it looks, also Strauss/Vaughan could have called on Pietersen, or even Bell.

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Ern

Australia are way, way ahead: Aside from having the best mature batsman in the world (Ponting) and the best young batsman in the world (Clarke) they have a stack of other batsman that would walk into any other Test side - even if Hayden retires you've got Hussey and Hodge (potential world XI players) staving off seasoned players with 7,500-10,000 first class runs to their name in Rogers and Jaques.. to say nothing of guys like Voges (who might well haved walked into the top six of SA, NZ, SL, Pak, INd and WI).

As if that were not enough... Brad Haddin is a better batsman-wicket-keeper than any first choice Test equivalent in World Cricket.

That's all before you consider that Clark would walk into a World XI, that Johnson is the most promising young seamer on the planet, that Hilfenhaus would walk into most Test sides and that MacGill and Hogg would have been regular fixtures in many Test sides over the past decade.

The only thing that will drag Australia back into the pack is the obsession with hopeless players like Symonds, Watson, Lee, Tait and White - guys who just ain't fit to wear the baggy green.