The West Indian cricket team played 16 first-class cricket matches in England in 1988, under the captaincy of Viv Richards. They enjoyed considerable success during the tour, while England endured a "disastrous summer" of continuous change.

England easily won the initial three-match One Day International (ODI) series, retaining the Texaco Trophy and raising expectations for a successful summer in the five-match Test series to follow. However, the West Indies comfortably retained the Wisden Trophy by winning the Test series 4–0. The players of the Test series were Malcolm Marshall for West Indies for his 35 wickets and Graham Gooch for England, who scored 459 runs and ended the summer as captain.

In Test match cricket, the captain is an important role and one which is usually relatively stable. This tour has become known in cricketing circles as the "summer of four captains" as England used four different captains in the five Test matches. The win set a high water mark for West Indian fortunes in Test cricket in England. The 1988 series proved to be the culmination of a 25-year run of almost uninterrupted success, but they have failed to win a single series in England in the subsequent years.

West Indian team

By the summer of 1988, the West Indies had experienced nearly ten years as the best Test team in world cricket, including a streak of winning 10 of 11 Test series they played from 1980 to 1985–86 (the other was drawn). However, the West Indies side that had enjoyed this considerable recent success was beginning to show signs of ageing. The experienced batsmen Viv Richards (the captain), Gordon Greenidge, Jeff Dujon, and Desmond Haynes were aged 36, 37, 32, and 32 respectively at the start of the Test series, and bowlers Michael Holding and Joel Garner and batsman Larry Gomes had recently retired. As a result, the squad arrived with an inexperienced group of pace bowlers: supporting Malcolm Marshall, a veteran of 53 Tests, were relative newcomers Courtney Walsh (20 Tests), Patrick Patterson (11), Winston Benjamin (4), Curtly Ambrose (3) and Ian Bishop (0).Statistics for the start of 1988 season taken from Playfair Cricket Annual 1988, ed. Bill Frindall, MacDonald Queen Anne Press 1988 p. 199, updated with stats from Cricinfo for Pakistan's tour to West Indies in 1987–88.

The West Indies' most recent series had been an "epic" 1–1 draw at home against Pakistan, but their previous two Test series against England had both resulted in 5–0 victories. The first of these, in England in 1984, was the first whitewash England had suffered since the 1920–21 season when England toured Australia, while the second occurred in the Caribbean in 1985–86. These two one-sided victories by the West Indies became known as "blackwashes".

English team By contrast, the English team had suffered a run of bad performances spanning several years, winning only seven of their previous 52 Tests. The England side had most recently toured Australia, drawing the Bicentennial Test and losing the only One Day International played, and New Zealand, drawing all three Test matches and sharing the ODIs 2–2. Before this, they had endured a "hostile" and highly controversial tour of Pakistan, during which an argument between captain Mike Gatting and umpire Shakoor Rana had led to a diplomatic incident. The three match series was lost 1–0, but the "teasing, taunting... bemusing" performance of leg-spinner Abdul Qadir, who took 30 wickets in three Tests, was unlikely to be repeated, given that the West Indies' only specialist spinner was Roger Harper, an off-break bowler.

Despite having lost 5–0 to the West Indies in each of the two most recent series, England had grounds for optimism, following good performances in the shorter form of the game: the team had reached the World Cup Final the previous year, losing to Australia. Writing in the Daily Mirror, Mike Bowen disparaged Gatting's captaincy, but talked up England's chances, based on their batting line-up. Gatting entered the summer as incumbent, but his position had been undermined by poor England Test performances and his on-field spat with Shakoor Rana. As such, he had been appointed captain only for the Texaco Trophy.

England's "summer of four captains" As the series unfolded, England were dominated by the West Indians in what Andrew Miller and Martin Williamson of ESPNcricinfo described as "the crazy summer of 1988". The cadence of the summer's contest was summed up for Wisden by Tony Cozier: "The morale and reputation of English cricket has seldom been as severely bruised as it was during the 1988 Cornhill Insurance Test series against West Indies".

The significance of there being four captains in just five Test matches can better be understood with context. The captain of a cricket team performs a vital role. Cricket captains have responsibility for strategy and tactics, and the England captain may also have an important say in team selection. Traditionally, captains of international teams are not changed frequently – for example, during the entire decade of the 1970s, only seven different men captained England, and from 1984 to 1994 the Australian Test team had just one captain: Allan Border, yet there were four English Test captains in just a few weeks in the summer of 1988.

+England captains during the tourCaptainedNameAgeCountyTests as captain First Test Mike Gatting31 Middlesex23 Second TestJohn Emburey35Middlesex2Third Test Fourth Test Chris Cowdrey30 Kent1 Fifth Test Graham Gooch35 Essex34

The many changes of captain over the summer reflected uncertainty in the English cricketing establishment as to how to respond to the drubbing the team was receiving from the West Indies; as Cozier put it, the selectors "did not seem to know where to turn, either for a new captain or for a settled team".

The England team had not suffered such uncertainty since the West Indies tour of England in 1966, where the selectors chose three different captains (Colin Cowdrey, M. J. K. Smith and Brian Close) and England lost the five-Test series 3–1. Coincidentally, Peter May was on the Board of Selectors for the 1966 series, while he was chairman of the Board of Selectors for the 1988 series.

Statistical summary Before the Test series began, the West Indian cricket team played three One Day Internationals against England in May 1988. All of the ODIs were won by England, largely thanks to disciplined, economical bowling by Gladstone Small, Phil DeFreitas and Derek Pringle throughout and good batting performances from Gatting in the First (82*) and Third (40*) ODIs. England retained the Texaco Trophy.

+One Day International summaryODIGroundResultDate First Edgbaston England won by 6 wickets 19 May Scorecard Second Headingley England won by 47 runs 21 May Scorecard Third Lord's England won by 7 wickets 23, 24 May Scorecard

The ODIs were followed by five Test matches. The First Test was drawn, and the remaining four Tests were all won convincingly by the West Indies.

+Test match summaryTestGroundResultDates First Trent Bridge Match drawn 2–7 June Scorecard Second Lord's West Indies won by 134 runs 16–21 June Scorecard Third Old Trafford West Indies won by an innings and 156 runs 30 June – 5 July Scorecard Fourth Headingley West Indies won by ten wickets 21–26 July Scorecard Fifth The Oval West Indies won by eight wickets 4–8 August Scorecard

The West Indies played 11 first-class matches, in addition to the five Tests, defeating Somerset in May and Kent in June. The other nine first-class matches, and the First Test, were all drawn: Sussex,

Gloucestershire, Worcestershire,

Lancashire, Northamptonshire,

Leicestershire, Glamorgan,

Nottinghamshire, and Essex. During the match against Gloucestershire at Bristol, immediately after the ODI series, Phil Simmons suffered a horrific injury, receiving a ball to the head from bowler David Lawrence. Not wearing a helmet, the blow caused his heart to stop and he had to be taken to hospital where he underwent emergency brain surgery. He missed the rest of the tour, but made a full recovery in time for the 1991 West Indies tour of England.

In addition to the One Day Internationals, there were four other non-first-class fixtures. West Indies beat Lavinia, Duchess of Norfolk's XI in a 40-over match, Hampshire in a 50-over match and a combined Oxford and Cambridge Universities team over two days; they also drew with Minor Counties in a two-day match.

Jeffrey Dujon was selected as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year for his performances during the 1988 season. The article in the 1989 edition said that his "value was repeatedly emphasised" during the 1988 series and that his performances "invariably steadied the innings; he held twenty catches and missed little."

One Day Internationals

England won the Texaco Trophy 3–0.

1st ODI

England omitted Eddie Hemmings, Bill Athey and Neal Radford from their squad of 14. They won the toss and elected to put the West Indies in to bat. Simmons and Greenidge made a first-wicket partnership of 34 before the former was caught by Allan Lamb off the bowling of Graham Dilley. Bowling alternate overs, Pringle and Small then dismissed Greenidge, Richards and Richie Richardson, leaving the West Indies on 72 for four. Gus Logie and Carl Hooper were restricted to singles as the England captain Gatting kept a tight in-field. Hooper made his half-century before being dismissed one run later, caught by John Emburey off the bowling of Small. Logie fell to Small 11 runs later, caught behind, with the score on 180 for six. The West Indies tail-enders provided little resistance to England, and the innings concluded with the visitors being dismissed for 217 off the last ball.

In reply, Graham Gooch and Chris Broad had a confident start and made an opening partnership of 70 before Broad was caught by Greenidge off Marshall's bowling. With the West Indies focus on restricting Gatting, Gooch was able to progress relatively unhindered but was dismissed for 43 by Ambrose, caught by Harper, and England were 119 for two. Then, described by Mike Selvey, writing in The Guardian, as a "loony period of kamikaze running", Monte Lynch was run out on his debut while both Gatting and Lamb narrowly avoided a similar fate. The latter was bowled by Hooper on 11, with England then 153 for four. Gatting, partnered by Pringle, made his fifty, and guided England to the total required with two overs to spare, winning the match by six wickets. Small was named man of the match for what Selvey described as "inspired bowling".

2nd ODI

The second ODI, at Headingley, saw the West Indies win the toss and elect to field. They dropped Harper to play four fast bowlers, yet Gooch and Broad made a steady start, scoring 17 off the first three overs. Scyld Berry described the subsequent period of batting as "one awful struggle against the fast bowlers" and compared it to Test match play. When Gatting was caught by Richards off Marshall's bowling, England were 64 for two, Lynch, Lamb and Gooch all failed to make an impression as their team collapsed to 83 for five. Pringle and Paul Downton then put on a sixth-wicket partnership of 66 before the former was caught behind by Dujon. Berry noted that Richards' insistence on bowling himself denied "his best bowlers" six overs. Downton made 30 before falling to Bishop with England on 154 for seven, but with DeFreitas making 15, supported by Emburey and Small, England concluded their innings on 186 for eight.