After trying more combinations than a persistent bank robber, the West Indies finally cracked the code and found a pair of effective new ball bowlers in time for the World Cup.
In each of the two warm-up matches and the three in the group stage of the tournament proper, Jerome Taylor and Daren Powell, the two Jamaicans, have secured early wickets.
It is a formula that immediately puts pressure on the opposition. Now they come to the tough part, starting here tomorrow at the new Sir Vivian Richards Stadium with the toughest of the lot, the first Super Eight match against the champions, Australia.
If Taylor and Powell can reproduce their early infiltrations of the previous matches and, for instance, get rid of Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting in their opening bursts, they would secure an immediate advantage, actual and psychological.
And, comes the cynical response, pink elephants will fly over the ground in formation to mark the event.
Ponting and Hayden, after all, both already have hundreds. Ponting has soared past 10,000 ODIs runs, Hayden’s 101 against South Africa on Saturday was the fastest ever World Cup hundred and Gilchrist is coasting with a couple of 50s and a few 40s.
The names of Friday Kestini, Yusi Sibanda, William Porterfield, Imran Nazir and Mohammed Hafeez, all cheap victims of the West Indies duo in group matches, don’t quite carry the same weight.
Yet Taylor and, especially, Powell have given the West Indies a headstart in each of their matches.
Both have tested batsmen with their pace and controlled aggression. Their success has lifted their confidence, a timely asset entering the decisive stage of the tournament.
In the opening group match, Pakistan were 39 for three and could not recover, falling for 187 in search of 241.
Zimbabwe, faltering at 31 for three, managed to muster 202 for nine. Ireland, one down to the eighth ball of the innings, were kept to 183 for eight off 48 overs.
The selectors settled on Taylor as the leader almost as soon as he was free of the injuries that bothered him following his premature entry into the Test team a few days short of his 19th birthday in 2003.
Over the past year, the slim, rhythmical 22-year-old has given the attack genuine sharpness with his 90 miles an hour pace and has become its spearhead. The high point was his decisive, late-innings hat-trick against Australia that gained a stimulating victory in the Champions Trophy in India last October.
In spite of the commendations of Andy Roberts and Michael Holding, it has taken somewhat longer for Powell to be given another chance. It is his fourth, His first was in 2003 in the home series against Bangladesh. In the intervening four years, he has had only 18 ODIs and 19 Tests.
It wasn’t that Powell was stricken with one of the ailments that attend fast bowlers. He has always been fit. The reason for his rotation was said to be attitude, the familiar blight of present West Indies cricketers, The list of other new ball bowlers tried is lengthy – Nixon McLean, Cameron Cuffy, Vasbert Drakes, Pedro Collins, Fidel Edwards, Tino Best, Deighton Butler and many more besides Ian Bradshaw and Corey Collymore who are in the World Cup squad.
Powell made out a strong case for himself on the tour of Sri Lanka in 2005 which the main players chose to boycott over one of the several contracts disputes that have so damaged West Indies cricket, A difficult tour of Australia later that year, when the West Indies lost all three Tests and he managed only five wickets in three Tests against much the same opposition he confronts tomorrow, once more cost him his place.
He himself puts his success on return down to improvement in keys areas, fitness, discipline and control.
Captain Brian Lara has taken to carrying him through his full, or nearly full, allocation of 10 overs, a difficult job under the fierce Caribbean sun.
His concentration is evident in the elimination of no-balls that has been an overall feature of the West Indies’ effort to date. He is yet to overstep in the tournament proper and did so only once in the preliminaries.
Unceasingly striving for pace in the past, he tended to thud the ball into the pitch, allowing batsmen the freedom to cut and pull. Now his length is fuller, allows for more swing and the ball is still delivered at around the mid-80s miles an hour. It is a blend he needs to stick to tomorrow.
