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South Africa secured victory in this series after winning the first and fourth Tests. However, South Africa is in the unusual position of having won the series but still lost ratings points.
This is because they needed to perform better than their 2-1 result to maintain their rating. Or, put another way, their much higher rating suggested they should have beaten West Indies by a larger margin than they did.
That this situation could occur to a team playing the West Indies is yet another indicator of how far West Indian cricket has plummeted since their dominance of world cricket during the 1980s and early 1990s.
South Africa retains second place in the ratings. However, this loss of six ratings points has widened the gap to first placed Australia to 41 ratings points. They remain a comfortable 85 ratings points ahead of third placed England.
The South African story in this series was that they won the first Test with a strong batting performance. However, their top order batting then deteriorated as the series progressed. By comparison, their bowlers sealed the series for them in the fourth Test - with both the bat and ball.
The West Indians have now retaken fifth position in the ratings by the smallest of margins from India. After India defeated Australia in March they condemned West Indies to sixth position in the ratings for the first time in history. Thankfully for West Indies supporters, it has only been for a short period.
This is due in part to a continuation of their normal trend of gaining ratings points during their home series before losing them overseas.
At times, the West Indian batting and bowling was able to hold its own against the more dominant South Africans. However, most of the players are relative newcomers to Test cricket. A lack of the consistency that has made the South Africans the only team to get near the Australians over the last two years is what cost West Indies the series.
This series is the last time Courtney Andrew Walsh will grace the Test area. After 132 Tests Walsh holds two world records. He is the only player in history to take over 500 Test wickets, and equally famously, the holder of the world record number of Test ducks.
Walsh finally finished his career with 519 Wickets. This is a record that will eventually be broken, but not for some time. Many of the players most likely (Warne, Vettori, Muralitharan and Wasim) are all increasingly unlikely to have the chance to get to the target for a variety of reasons (form, injury and age for example).
It is, of course, entirely possible that Walsh?s two records will be broken by specialist number eleven Glenn McGrath. Although McGrath's increasing diligence with the bat may see him in the running to take only one of Walsh's records.
Walsh experiencing a long period of consistent Test wins for the majority of his 18 odd years of Test cricket. It was therefore fitting that Walsh was able to go out with a win in his final Test. It is a shame that Walsh's long time new ball partner, Curtly Ambrose, could not have had the same departure in England last year.
The West Indies still has a lot of work to do. After setting the second highest rating in history in the 1980s (1225 points), their rating of 1030 points is equivalent to their rating during the entire 1950s.
Their next series is a two Test series in Zimbabwe in July where they will have their best chance to turn around their six year losing streak on tour.
The latest Test Cricket Ratings are: 1 Australia (1185); 2 South Africa (1144); 3 England (1059); 4 Pakistan (1048); 5 West Indies (1030) ; 6 India (1029); 7 New Zealand (992); 8 Sri Lanka (973); 9 Zimbabwe (911); 10 Bangladesh (876p - provisional).
