A poker-faced EARL BEST worries about England tour crowds

Sir Allen Stanford

When Carnival sneezes, cricket in the West Indies, so dependent nowadays on its carnivalesque additives for much of its attraction, is virtually certain to catch a severe cold. And in the wake of substantially reduced crowds at popular Carnival events, even the West Indies Cricket Board now knows for certain that belts are being tightened. Willy-nilly. So perhaps we shall see something different happening with the marketing of the England versus West Indies series, the first Test of which bowls off this week in Jamaica. But there is room for serious doubt. There is little evidence to suggest that those responsible for selling cricket in the region are really in the market for workable, long-term solutions to the problem of dwindling crowds.

Here’s an idea for them. It has been offered a score of times before in many different fora; perhaps this time, it will fall on much more fertile ground. The advice, after all, comes out of the mouth of a true cricket icon. I refer, of course, to Sachin Tendulkar’s recent statements about how to solve the problem of shrinking attendances at Test cricket. For cricket’s handlers here in the region, the problem is made more acute by the parlous state of West Indies cricket, so cruelly exposed in New Zealand, and the even more parlous state of the West Indies Cricket Board’s finances, dealt a serious blow by the strategic withdrawal of Sir Allen Stanford in December. Despite presidential and other protestations about the Board’s financial independence and solidity, who can believe that the WICB is not worried about its continued survival as a viable entity?

What the Indian batting mega-star said was that the increasing popularity of the shorter forms of the game, particularly the Twenty20 version, did not make him lose any sleep over the future of Test cricket. Conceding that even in India where the game enjoys a fanatical following attendance at Test matches was declining, Tendulkar pooh-poohed the notion that the axe hung threateningly above Test cricket.

“Test cricket has its own place,” he reassured reporters in Mumbai last month. “There is no threat to Test cricket from IPL or Twenty20 World Cup or even 50-over matches.” But he did feel that there was something Indian cricketing authorities should do to prevent things from developing into a crisis. 

“Whenever Test cricket is played,” he suggested indirectly to the BCCI, “local school and college students should be allowed free entry on weekends so that ten years down the line these children will become lovers of Test cricket. I remember when I was a 10-year-old, I went to the Wankhede stadium and watched the West Indies in action. I still remember Michael Holding’s bowling in that match.”

Which brings us back to Stanford. One of the major successes of the Stanford experiment was the degree to which he was able to entice people of all ages to the matches. Innovative marketing that took account of West Indian specificity and idiosyncracies ensured that it was not just the traditional crowd that turned up at the Twenty/20 turnstiles. According to Stanford, it mattered not that the format was different; the game was the same. Lovers of Twenty/20 cricket today were, at least potentially, lovers of Test cricket tomorrow. There were those (including Holding) who held that, in fact, Sir Allen’s strategy was designed less to develop durable interest in Test cricket down the road than to provoke exploitable interest in cricket up the road, i.e. in North America. And the Stanford detractors also noted - unfairly in my view - that the huge sums to be earned by those who actually played in the games were driving would-be West Indies players to pay much more attention to the development of Twenty/20 skills at the expense of basic batting skills.

Sachin Tendulkar... solution for bringing the crowds to cricket

Whatever the truth of those claims, I think that even Test cricket will be adversely affected if Stanford decides to stay out of West Indies cricket. It is beyond dispute that large numbers of people of all ages who had never come close to looking at a cricket match discovered the game because of the new tournament. It is no less true that large numbers of young people who had given little thought to cricket as a career began to consider taking up the game seriously once they saw the new earning potential created by Stanford’s annual Twenty/20competition. So WICB President Julian Hunte misses the point when he sees the Stanford decision to “review” his involvement in West Indies as meaning simply a temporary loss of revenue. If he - and, by extension, his Board - fails to see the implications for future interest in cricket, I fear that the already shrinking crowds may soon disappear completely. 

But even if Stanford were still on the scene, one has to wonder who’s going to be watching the contest between Chris Gayle’s West Indians and England. It is not just a matter of increasingly scarce resources and belt-tightening. After New Zealand, people may well be asking themselves what there is to see if you are a West Indian supporter. Having lost only the ODIs - and by the narrowest of margins at that - Gayle’s side might well have come out of the tour “with our heads high.” The tour statistics, however, tell a sorry tale. Only a pair of players, Gayle and the ever reliable Shivnarine Chanderpaul really did themselves proud. And given the high standards he has set for himself, the Guyanese left-hander, one feels, would have been less than satisfied with his showing overall. None of the other batsmen enhanced his reputation although Ramnaresh Sarwan’s unbeaten half-century in the second ODI did remind all of how talented a batsman he still is. The promising youngsters who, it was hoped, would seize the opportunity provided by the tour to seal their place on the team, Xavier Marshall, Shaun Findlay, Kieron Pollard consistently failed to convince and often failed to fire. They would have won themselves no new fans.

The bowlers performed no better than their batting teammates, not at any rate with the ball. Jerome Taylor as usual left little doubt about his quality but injury prevented him from giving of his best throughout the tour. With the exception of Fidel Edwards who produced an impressive performance in Napier, what one remembers about the others is not so much what they did as what they were unable to do. Like so many spinners before him, Nikita Miller made no impression, doing nothing to suggest that he will be back. And both fast bowling newcomers, Kemar Roach and Lionel Baker, confirmed pre-tour suspicions that their selection was premature, seeming not quite up to the demands of the international game. It is, moreover, worth recalling that the Kiwis are ranked below the West Indies in the cellar position, meaning that the challenge of the last two months or so was hardly among the toughest tests that international cricket currently provides.

As for the imminent series, neither the contest nor the English opposition, ranked no higher than fifth in the current Test listings, seems to be particularly compelling for the spectators. The record shows that since Michael Atherton’s 1998 1-3 loss to Courtney Walsh’s side in the Caribbean, the home side has not been able to get the better of these tourists. Despite the aura of unsettledness surrounding the touring side, what with the sacking of the coach and the replacement of Kevin Pietersen by Andrew Strauss at the helm of the team, few will feel that Gayle and company will reverse the recent trend. No one will attach any real significance to the result of the one Twenty20 match on the schedule, carded for March 15 at the Queen’s Park Oval, just before the start of the ODIs. And there is little to suggest that, home conditions notwithstanding, the West Indians can as a team attain levels of consistency that will see them get the better of their visitors in the four-Test, five-ODI series.

So when the First Test bowls off on Wednesday, many eyes will be on the size of the crowd. There has been a lot of talk recently about the number of Jamaicans on the team. Apart from those already mentioned, the squad in New Zealand also included Brendan Nash and Carlton Baugh, making a total of seven. If the spectators stay away from Sabina (Feb. 4-8), they will probably also stay away from the ARG in Antigua a week later (Feb. 13-17). Economic factors are likely to have the least impact in Barbados (Feb. 26-March 2) and Trinidad (March 6-10). But what is certain is that, if only Gayle and Chanderpaul continue to step up and deliver, there will be hundreds of empty seats at all the grounds around the region until the Test matches are out of the way.

Unless, of course, acutely conscious of Carnival’s symptoms, the Board decides to try Tendulkar’s medicine.