Windies Cricket Still Searching for the Breakthrough
EARL BEST looks ahead to the end of 2010
Justifiably buoyed by the performance of his team in last year’s three-Test series against Australia, West Indies skipper Chris Gayle might have at one stage been looking forward to next month’s five-match ODI re-engagement with that formidable foe. No more, one feels.
Kieron Pollard
Not for the first time, the 15-member squad selected for the trip is notable much more for the omissions than for those whose names actually appear on the list. However, this time it is neither WIPA politics nor WICB bungling that is responsible for this situation, not directly anyway. At the heart of the problem is that old enemy of West Indian cricket, injury. Those whom the old bugbear has sidelined include frontline pacers Jerome Taylor and Fidel Edwards as well as middle-order stalwarts Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan. To the incapacitated list are added young opening batsman Adrian Barath, who made such an impressive debut in November, and left-arm spinner Sulieman Benn, who would have missed the first two ODIs anyway on account of his suspension for an incident in the Perth Test. When one considers what is left to choose from, one begins to see just how acute is the problem.
Not surprisingly, Chairman of Selectors Clyde Butts puts a positive spin on the situation, describing the five ODIs and two Twenty20s that the West Indies will play on the tour as “an opportunity for other players to re-establish themselves” in the absence of the injured key players. Professing his own and his fellow selectors’ abiding faith in the players, he declared, “We believe the team can beat Australia. Before we went to Australia for the Test matches, the team was not given a chance by many people but we saw how well they bounced backed after the first Test and challenged the Aussies in Adelaide and Perth.” Is it that chairmen of selectors have this propensity for believing that lightning will strike in the same place as often as they want?
Naming Dwayne Smith and Kieron Pollard, the former West Indies offspinner continued, “We have selected some allrounders who we believe have the ability to be match-winners at the international level.” And conceding that the pair “have been a bit disappointing in the past,” he argues hopefully that “they have displayed the ability to perform on the Twenty20 stage and we think they will be major assets in the squad.” Is it that chairmen of selectors don’t know that in blind man’s country one-eyed men are kings?
Still, scattered among the islands there may be a handful of supporters who share Butts’ optimism but one suspects that they will be hard to find. After all, Ricky Ponting’s Australians have not been exactly idle since Gayle and company departed their shores in December. Despite all the continuing vulnerability to which their performance in the three-Test series against Pakistan clearly attests, the final result shows that it was the home team who came away as 3-0 winners. Led, ominously, by a back-in-form skipper Ponting, the Aussies racked up no fewer than five centuries in the three encounters, including one each by the same openers who against Gayle’s men more than once threatened without success to cross the three-figure threshold and a double by their captain. In fact, Man-of-the-Series Shane Watson added a couple of 90s before he finally broke what was looking more and more like his century jinx. One expects that there was more of the same in the ODIs that came at the end of last month but which as I write have not yet begun. By nature competitive and spoiling for a cricketing fight, the Aussies are now once more completely confident of their ability to topple anyone from the number-one-Test-team-in-the-world slot. Prevented by scheduling issues from reclaiming the title immediately, Ponting and company will be determined to send a consistent message to M.S. Dhoni’s Indians about who the real champions - and not merely the title-holders - are. It is a safe bet, then, that, in the 50-over contest that starts later this week, Gayle’s men will find themselves just so much collateral damage in the battle for Test supremacy.
A close look at the composition of the squad reveals that the West Indians are woefully short on reliable middle-order batting. Presumably, Lendl Simmons will be used to partner Gayle at the top of the order. That leaves the four slots between the openers and Dwayne Bravo and Denesh Ramdin to be filled by Runako Morton, Travis Dowlin, Narsingh Deonarine, Brendan Nash, Pollard, Smith and Darren Sammy. It is true that Pollard did attract the maximum US$750,000 bid in the subsequent IPL auction in mid-January and that his stock has risen since his signing with South in the Aussie Big Bash. But notwithstanding Butts’ hopeful assessment of his and Smith’s chances of success in Australia, there is little on the record to suggest that we can reasonably expect convincing, consistent match-winning performances from the line-up on offer. In fact, the most reassuring thought that emerges from a perusal of the list is that the new responsible leader that we have seen in Gayle since the New Zealand tour will know with a great deal of certainty that if he fails, it is most likely all fall down.
Gayle must also be greatly relieved that limited-overs cricket does not require a team to dismiss the opposition more than once; his current squad would have had to toil unceasingly to achieve that. If there were any lingering doubts about the quality of Kemar Roach, the US$720,000 bid for him in the IPL auction confirmed that West Indians are not the only ones convinced that he is ready to take his place among the successful fast bowlers in contemporary cricket. But great fast bowlers hunt in pairs and, for all their honest effort, neither Gavin Tonge nor Ravi Rampaul is anywhere near to the place from which they can inspire fear in the hearts of any international batsman of class, certainly not those in the Aussie line-up. Gayle’s confirmed wicket-taking options in any single match are limited to the 20 overs Roach and Bravo are allowed in addition to the occasional handful when he himself is able to get it right. It does not inspire confidence in the ability of his side to restrict the Aussies to targets that the WI will have a realistic chance of reaching if Ponting wins the toss and, as is his wont, bats first. I sympathise with the paying spectators if the WI should bat first often in the five matches.
When the tour is over and the West Indians return home, they will have some easy opposition on their plate. The theoretically unchallenging home series against a weak Zimbabwe side- let’s give the Board some credit- is precisely what Gayle’s men will need to pick themselves up before the start of their next assignment. The World Twenty20 tournament in the Caribbean runs for two weeks from April 30 to mid-May. For the rest of the year after that, with the exception of the three-Test home series against South Africa, carded for June 10 to 30, the WI will subsist on a diet of One-day and Twenty20 matches. That is not likely to work in favour of the home side whose last Test outing will by that time be some six months behind them. If we assume that all the currently injured players are fit and available and that with Marlon Samuels’ ban due to expire on May 9, he too will be considered for selection, it is possible that on West Indian wickets the West Indians can field a team capable of holding its own against the very strong Proteas. If, however, the injury woes continue, it seems doubtful that Gayle and company will be able to avoid the severe mauling which seemed on the cards before and after Brisbane 2009.
A word about Samuels. Cricinfo reported late last year that the now 28-year-old Jamaican was rearing to resume his prematurely truncated career. Declaring his belief that his return could have a positive impact, Samuels said, “It has been very frustrating sitting and watching cricket all this time but I am hoping to come back better than before. I will definitely come back with a stronger frame of mind. Most definitely my intention is to return to the West Indies team. I have trained very hard and been very disciplined while I have been out of the game.”
Sounding like a man eager to show the cricketing world the error of its ways, he continued, “The two years will be over soon. I want to bat No. 4 for West Indies. That is where I always wanted to bat, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to get that opportunity. I am very much looking forward to batting again with guys like Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan.”
According to Butts, the talented right-hander’s prospects for a return to the first team in the current year are good.
“Once Marlon’s suspension is over and he’s playing cricket again he will be considered,” Butts told Cricinfo. “Of course, the performances have to be there. When Marlon was suspended he was just starting to score a lot of runs and look the part. He’s someone who could strengthen the middle order and he also offers part-time off-spin.”
Whatever happens, it does not look as though 2010 will be a very good year for West Indies cricket. The Board continues to gripe about the state of its finances and there is continuing dissatisfaction among member countries - and supporters - with the way that translates into an inadequate regional tournament. The way back to cricketing supremacy for which the region has been searching for over a decade will surely remain elusive if not inaccessible without a reformed domestic tournament that provides a serious forum for the showcasing and development of talent and potential. All are seemingly agreed that a six or seven-match domestic tournament has no chance of being the kind of cauldron in which world-beating players can be shaped. But the Board is right is insisting that its actions are circumscribed by its finances. What seems urgent, then, is for the Board to use the second half of this year to start a serious region-wide discussion about the way forward. With little of real moment to engage us on the field, we can usefully focus most of our attention on a structured discussion about the infrastructural requirements for success.
I strongly recommend that Julian Hunte and the rest of the West Indies Cricket Board adopt a new year’s resolution to bring Gary Sobers, Vivian Richards, Richie Richardson et al into the WICB fold by the end of the current year. In my view, it is certain to prove useful to have them at least as talkers if not as doers. Allen Stanford may have done WI cricket an unintended disservice by the way he chose to fund his operations but I submit that his idea to get the “legends” involved in the administration of the game in the region was not far off base in so far as running the operation is concerned.
