Asks Orin Davidson
It was as satisfying a Test match result as any in recent times for West Indies cricket.
The Chris Gayle-led team’s innings and 23-run victory over England brought joy to supporters simply because the West Indies had been written off by the English pundits as a ‘walkover’ for their team.
It was the first time the home team had defeated England in a Test in nine years and to add to the insult, England were humiliated inside three days and two sessions in an encounter that seemed headed for a draw only the day before.
The performance of the West Indies team in this match is proof that the players have loads of talent which is not being fully utilized.
Jerome Taylor’s spell of 5-11 was sensational if only because of the fact that the pitch was viewed as too slow to help the fast bowlers.
Taylor destroyed England’s second innings with an awesome display of fast bowling, comprising skill and intelligence rarely demonstrated by players who are capable of much better.
He cut down the Englishmen with a telling combination of each way swing, pace and accuracy, qualities all Windies fast bowlers must aspire to.
The question is why can’t every current West Indian fast bowler and the aspiring ones too, work everyday to acquire the skill to swing the ball both ways and develop techniques for accuracy and pace?
Why can’t they be found every day in the nets seeking advice from the long list of proven West Indian fast bowlers? And most importantly, why don’t these fast bowlers and the others work harder on their stamina in general all year round?
They have the natural ability because it is on display all the time.
The pacemen in the current team that helped bury England at Sabina Park on Saturday, do not have world beating statistics but have no reason not to.
Apart from Taylor, you have Fidel Edwards, who is well under six feet tall and closer to 150 than 200 pounds in weight, but can consistently produce blinding pace with his uncanny slinging action and with each way swing too.
Not to mention his deadly in swinging yorker.
As for Darren Powell, who could forget that screaming yorker he delivered that broke Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s off stump in the Stanford 20/20 series last February?
And not to forget that destructive spell he unleashed on New Zealand in the run up to Twenty/20 World Cup where he blitzed their batting for four wickets for three runs off four overs.
Then there was that fiery spell when he removed three Australian batsmen including the great Ricky Ponting that helped reduce world champions Australia to 18-5 last year at Sabina Park.
Yet these awesome displays of ability are tarnished by more poor and ordinary ones, which can be attributed to the players’ neglect for not putting in the work necessary to make the outstanding displays more consistent.
And the thinking that goes with it.
If you ask any of the available West Indian players that made up the Dream Teams of the 1970s and 1980s they will reveal that fitness was the key to their success.
There are countless stories of the hard grind those players, especially the fast bowlers, put in to achieve and maintain the stamina to be world beaters.
You hear tales of Colin Croft training with the Guyana Defence Force soldiers in the hills of Timehri.
There is another one of the late Malcolm Marshall creating consternation by jogging religiously in one neighbourhood in England when he was a county player at Hampshire.
Or about the amazement of Indian player Navjot Singh Sidhu upon discovering that the person he saw jogging every day religiously near his hotel on a West Indies tour, happened to be Courtney Walsh.
The great Wes Hall of an earlier era spoke about the countless miles he ran every day to become the fast bowler he was.
Gordon Greenidge, the opening batman, wrote about the police hassles he endured while jogging early in the mornings in England and Clive Lloyd has related of the seawall runs he did everyday early on in Georgetown.
And if you are a keen observer, you would not have missed Carl Hooper doing his daily laps at the National Park whenever he visited Guyana during his Windies career.
That is what it takes to become great, but the modern day West Indian player has rarely bought into it that fitness culture or were never forced to.
These days you find many of them, especially the pacemen unable to last a full test series either due to lack of stamina or injury.
In South Africa a year ago, West Indies defeated the homesters in the first Test due mainly to incisive fast bowling.
They could dismiss the South African batting lineup only once in the next two Tests and duly lost the series 2-1. Immediately afterwards, there was that Powell inspired spell that had Australia reeling on 18-5 in their second innings.
But they could not finish the job. Australia recovered, won the Test and went on to take the three test series 2-0.
Fitness allows fast bowlers to do wonders, moreso in Tests in all types of conditions.
You do not see West Indian fast bowlers waking up dead pitches the way Croft did at Bourda.
Or the way Brett Lee rebounds with devastating late first innings or second innings spells.
Taylor was fantastic at Sabina which thrust West Indies into an early 1-0 series lead.
Much kudos to him his teammates and the team in general, for a great all round display.
But this is only the first Test. There are three more to go. West Indian fans would like the series to end the way it started in victory, and even if it does not finish that way, the team owes its supporters the obligation to work towards becoming more consistently successful.
Because they would know by now what it takes to get there.
