This, without any shadow of doubt, was Angus Fraser's day. The old shirehorse may be living on borrowed time in Test matches these days, but he is a proud fellow who, when he gets the scent of competition in his nostrils, makes up in spirit what he might have lost with the years.
Yesterday, his skill with the ball, and earlier doggedness with the bat might (and, caution here, there is still a long way to go in this match) have put England on the road to victory in this second Test.
In two spells, one from each end of Queen's Park Oval, Fraser removed the entire West Indies middle order, taking five successive wickets, including a wonderful adrenalin rush of 13 deliveries that brought him three for five, including the most coveted wicket of all, that of Brian Lara, for 55.
It spoiled Lara's personal carnival. The Prince of Port of Spain, captaining West Indies for the first time in his home country and without a Test hundred to his name here, had promised "something special" to mark his 50th Test. For 166 minutes, the crowd cheered and the conch shells honked as that is what he produced.
No one else on this capricious, parched surface had come remotely close to matching the freedom or confidence of his strokeplay that threatened to wrench away any advantage that England had gained by taking early wickets. Andy Caddick, in particular, was treated with something approaching disdain by Lara.
But after pulling Fraser thunderously through midwicket for his seventh boundary, he tried to whip him away through the same region, got a leading edge that steepled to mid-off, where Mike Atherton waited patiently and confidently.
In his previous over, Fraser had Shivnarine Chanderpaul smartly taken at first slip by Graham Thorpe for 34, to end a fourth-wicket partnership of 78, the highest stand of the match and when, after Lara's departure, he then had Jimmy Adams leg before wicket without offering a stroke, he had taken five wickets in an innings for the ninth time in 34 Tests and for the fourth time against West Indies.
Earlier, he had taken the wickets of Stuart Williams and Carl Hooper, which with Dean Headley's dismissal of Sherwin Campbell, had left West Indies floundering at 48 for three.
Fraser finished the day with figures of five for 47, as the West Indies struggled to stay in touch with England. They will resume today on 177 for seven, a deficit still of 37, and hope that their own tail will wag as vigorously as had England's in the morning when Fraser and Nasser Hussain frustrated the West Indies bowlers for a further one and a half hours, taking their ninth-wicket partnership to 42, the second highest of the England innings.
Kenny Benjamin took the wickets of Fraser, for 17, and Phil Tufnell with successive deliveries to finish the innings, a worthy England recovery from the depths of Thursday afternoon, with Hussain remaining unbeaten on 61 after five and a quarter hours of diligence and courage. Benjamin and Curtly Ambrose finished with three wickets apiece; Ambrose, the beanpole skinflint, conceding just 23 runs from 26 overs.
