By Winston McGowan
The West Indies recently completed the international phase of this year’s Carib-bean cricket season. The regional team succeeded in drawing a Test series with Sri Lanka, but was defeated by the world champion, Australia. Its general lack of success almost invariably evokes memories of the phenomenal results of the West Indies in Tests in the 1980s and early half of the 1990s which have been described as “the glory days of West Indies cricket.”
In this remarkable period between 1980 and 1995 the West Indies under the leadership of Clive Lloyd, followed by Vivian Richards and Richie Richardson, were undefeated in 27 consecutive Test series and two one-off Tests against South Africa in 1992 and Sri Lanka in 1993. This era was glorious for at least three main reasons.
Firstly, it was the period when the West Indies enjoyed its greatest success in its long history of Test cricket which dates back to 1928, 80 years ago. It surpassed by far the region’s performance in the mid 1960s when under the captaincy of Garfield Sobers the West Indies became world cricket champions for the first time. This first period of ascendancy from 1965 to 1968 was short-lived, in striking contrast to the prolonged period of dominance from 1980 to 1995.
Secondly, these fifteen years were an unprecedented achievement of unbroken dominance in the long history of international cricket dating back to 1877. The game’s closest comparison was Australia’s sequence of 12 series without defeat (10 wins and two draws) in 19 years between 1934 and 1953, including six years from 1939 to 1945 when Test cricket was completely interrupted by the Second World War. Between 1980 and 1995 the West Indies won 19 and drew eight series and played 115 Tests, winning 59, losing only 15 and drawing 41.
Their dominance was reflected in the fact that the composition of the team in a Test series was seldom changed except for injury and many of its members had the rare experience of never participating in a rubber that was lost.
Thirdly, the period of supremacy from 1980 to 1995 was glorious because of the numerous specific outstanding achievements by the team. One of them was a sequence of 27 consecutive Tests without a loss between January 1982 and December 1984, surpassing the record of 26 games without defeat set by England between 1968 and 1971. Furthermore, at one stage the West Indies had the impressive accomplishment of suffering only two defeats in 38 Tests and three in 54 Tests. For seven years between 1981 and 1988 no visiting team won even a single Test in the Caribbean, even though nineteen games were played. The regional team was so strong that it usually defeated its opponents abroad, even though they enjoyed home advantage.
1984 in particular was a year of phenomenal achievement for the West Indies. It included eleven Test wins in succession, surpassing the previous record of eight successive wins by Australia sixty-four years before in 1920-1.
The first three of these eleven victories were against Australia, enabling the West Indies to defeat the Aussies 3-0 in a five-match rubber in the Caribbean. This was not only the largest margin of victory achieved by the West Indies in a series against Australia, but, more remarkably, also the first occasion in Test cricket that a team did not lose a single second-innings wicket in a five-match series.
Furthermore, in their next five Tests between June and August 1984, the West Indies became the first team to win every match in a five-game series against England in England. All five wins were by massive margins, namely, an innings and 180 runs, nine wickets, eight wickets, an innings and 64 runs, and 172 runs. This achievement was repeated in the Caribbean two years later in 1986, again with convincing victories – by 10 wickets, seven wickets, an innings and 30 runs, 10 wickets, and 240 runs.
West Indian fans who remember these glorious days are extremely disappointed with the poor performances of the current team, ranked a lowly eighth among Test-playing sides. They long for a return to the glory days of the 1980s and early 1990s. The reasons for the remarkable success which the West Indies enjoyed in that golden era will be the focus of the second instalment of this article.
