He is excited to have got hooked as the new West Indies head coach and eager to consummate the deal but, like Larry Fortensky, would be wary of why all of his predecessors didn’t go the distance. As it turned out, ominously perhaps, Fortensky didn’t either.
Gibson is the eighth man in the job since the first, Rohan Kanhai, was appointed in 1992 and given the title “cricket manager”. It is a count that doesn’t include those who had interim stints (Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, David Moore and now David Williams).
Kanhai and those who followed him – Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall, Roger Harper and Gus Logie – were all West Indian cricketers of prominence, some among the greatest and most universally admired.
Kanhai quit in 1995, Roberts was removed during the 1996 World Cup after a year in the post and Marshall sadly died in office in 1991 at the age of 41.
Harper saw out his contract after the 2003 World Cup and opted not to come back for more. Logie was shunted aside (“by mutual consent” was the euphemism in the official statement) when the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), seduced by Australia’s success on the field, followed a global pattern and installed two Aussies, Bennett King, who had no playing experience, and John Dyson, the former Test opener.
King exited before his time was up, reading the signs after the failed 2007 World Cup campaign. Dyson was dismissed halfway through his contract last year without so much as an explanation.
Gibson actually played under both Roberts (in the first of his two Tests in England in 1995 and in the World Cup the following year) and Marshall (in most of his ODIs and when called up in South Africa for his second Test in 1999).
For the past 10 years, the 40-year-old Barbadian was a roaming professional, plying his trade in seam and swing bowling and swashbuckling batting with a variety of teams in South Africa and England before turning to coaching.
He was attached to the National Academy of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) before he landed the high profile position as the senior team’s bowling coach in 2007, though what he really wanted, as he told me in an interview during that year’s West Indies tour, was to be West Indies’ head coach after King quit.
He might have got it then for he was in contention but, given the WICB’s well-known unpredictability, he couldn’t wait when England came up with their offer first.
He’s got the thumbs up from most respected commentators and former players for his work with a new generation of England bowlers but his new role is significantly more all embracing, and far more complex, than the restricted mandate of bowling mentor.
His WICB contract is for three years and, as CEO Ernest Hilaire explained, covers all West Indies representative teams – from the under-15 and under-19s through to the hopefully revived ‘A’ side to the top.
“It gives him an opportunity to stamp a particular style of West Indian coaching across all the teams,” Hilaire said.
It’s an enormous responsibility and Gibson needs all the support he can get to make a fist of it, most critically from the WICB and the territorial boards and from the players and their association’s directorate.
The experiences of earlier coaches would be helpful.
On his way out six years ago, Harper delivered a powerful message.
“One of the things that we have to get rid of is the insularity at all levels,” he said. “Everyone wants the West Indies to win but they all want their own people to play. Until we get rid of that, until we start thinking as one, until we have common ideals and common goals and stop filling our territorial players with nonsense then we’re not going to get anywhere because we are creating monsters.”
Unfortunately, it is a virus rooted in West Indies cricket for which there is no known cure.
Just when real spirit and harmony can be detected in both the senior team and in the next generation at the recent Under-19 World Cup, a discordant voice has emerged from an executive member of a territorial board.
“The fellows really came together as a unit,” was opener Kraigg Brathwaite’s comment on the youth team’s third place finish in New Zealand. “We just encouraged each other and didn’t give up. Once we stood together and didn’t quarrel or anything, we knew we would come out on top.”
Such optimism contrasts with the cynicism of Lalman Kowlessar of the Trinidad & Tobago Cricket Board (TCCB) who has chosen to denigrate Gibson’s credentials as coach to press his case for David Williams.
“He cannot bring anything to the table,” he said of Gibson. “I don’t think he has what it takes to get the regional side back to the top of world cricket”.
Making his real point, he saw it as “really unfair” on Williams, who has served as interim coach since Dyson’s demise and will remain as assistant to Gibson.
Kowlessar noted that Williams, the former Trinidad and Tobago and West Indies wicket-keeper, has “been doing a good job and with limited resources (and) has done enough to prove to the WICB that he could do the job.”
That may well be so. Unobtrusive and conscientious, Williams came to the post after success with Trinidad and Tobago. The West Indies are lucky to have individuals like him, not so with those in high places who would sow the seeds of discord with their tactless remarks.
It is obvious that Gibson’s rapport with the captain, especially a captain who so clearly has the strong support of his players, is as critical to the team’s well being as is his relationship with the board and its affiliates. The new coach has already openly recognised such a reality.
He is no doubt already aware of the overall influence of the players through the West Indies Players Association (WIPA). He would have noted its strength in initiating four strikes in the past five years.
If he was in any doubt, those with names as illustrious as Kanhai, Roberts and Richards can all attest to such a straightforward truth that goes back to the days before Dinanath Ramnarine transformed the WIPA into such a potent force.
When Kanhai reported to the board that he had been abused in public by certain players on an overseas tour in 1995, understandably anticipating some action, he was the one replaced. The players stayed.
His successor, Roberts, lasted a year. He left with alarming stories of the flat dismissal of his advice by fast bowlers, of the general “attitudinal problems” and of an instance where he had to plead with the team to take the field after a break in play.
He also commented, for good measure, that WICB members “really do not understand cricket.”
In 2004, Ramnarine wrote to the WICB protesting that Richards, then chairman of the panel, and other selectors had “verbally belittled and threatened” some players in public. Within a month, Richards resigned.
Such are some of the pitfalls Gibson faces as he tries to develop a long and happy relationship with West Indies cricket.
No one else has yet managed it. He can – but only if he has the wholehearted support of everyone involved. It’s a big if.
