Zimbabwe would have gained a great deal more than the West Indies from a tour, the eventual outcome notwithstanding, was more competitive than we might have expected. Fighting as the Zimbabweans are to claw their way back into test cricket they can at least take heart from the fact that the outcome of the series, while reflecting an overall loss, was by no means a disgrace.
For the West Indies it was an entirely different matter. The encounter with Zimbabwe was expected to offer no serious competition to a team that was almost the best that we could muster. But for Chris Gayle’s explosive hitting at the top of most of the innings Zimbabwe could easily have won perhaps another two games. That speaks volumes for the inherent weakness of a weak and debilitated Caribbean side and, more particularly, the persistent ineptitude of the various batting hopefuls against a patently below par Zimbabwean bowling attack comprising, in the main, rookie spin bowlers.
With the ICC Twenty/20 World Cup now just over a month away the West Indies has named a squad of thirty players many of whom were part of the Zimbabwe encounter and even a few of whom were not considered good enough to be selected to play against the Zimbabweans in the first place. Nowhere is the weakness of the squad more definitively underscored than in the selection of Wavell Hinds, a player with no track record whatsoever in the briefest form of the game and a player, moreover, who, in any of the leading cricketing nations, would long have given way to younger, more talented players.
A cursory perusal of the selected players reveals not only a woeful shortage of tried and proven batting talent but an apparent reliance on a handful of ‘all-rounders’ whose talents are strictly limited and a crop of quick bowlers whose exposure to the best international batting talent in the Twenty/20 format is, to say the least, limited. Whatever the eventual team selected from the current squad we can hardly delude ourselves into thinking that the West Indies will not be among the underdogs, unlikely to survive the might of the stronger, more accomplished teams.
What is unfolding is yet another chapter in the story of our cricket’s inexorable slide into ignominy. We are, frankly, woefully short on both talent and tenacity. The inevitable period of transformation, that passing of the mantle from one generation of players to another – a period which teams like Australia and India are managing with more than a fair measure of success – has been a near nightmare for the West Indies. We have simply not been able to produce sufficient players who have demonstrated a capacity to perform consistently to the standards required of the international game and that, whatever the reasons, is really the long and short of the West Indies’ unending dilemma.
Those teams that have done best in the international arena over the past decade or so have prospered mostly on account of the ability of their respective domestic cricketing setups to produce players who demonstrate a capacity to fill the shoes of those whose playing careers have either ended or are slipping into the twilight zone. Their accomplishments have been a matter of proven talent, on the one hand, and, on the other, the cultivation of the kind of mental toughness that so often makes a difference at the highest levels of the game. Without trying too hard one can name a dozen recent West Indian players who, having been given their chance, were weighed and found decidedly wanting in one or another of the departments of technique and temperament.
The point has been made before but is worth making again that the retrogression of our cricket has to do with how seriously we take the game. Caribbean cricket cannot be set aside from the rest of a challenging agenda confronting the region and perhaps the argument can be made that cricket has simply slipped from the front burner of the list of regional challenges – if ever it was on the front burner, that is. The political interventions of recent years that appeared to point accusing fingers in the direction of the West Indies Cricket Board have arrived at no decisive conclusions as to where do we go from here and the confrontations between the Board and the pesky West Indies Players Association (WIPA) have spawned a distracting diversion from the real issues without really accomplishing anything meaningful in its own right.
Perhaps the decisive indicator of the mortal danger facing the continuity of Caribbean cricket has been the muted calls – in Trinidad and Tobago, particularly – for an end to what one writer described as “the whole charade of West Indies cricket” – and a parting of ways as far as cricket is concerned.
No one appears to be particularly keen to make the point that it is our politicians who have been the biggest ‘sinners’ in the demise of our cricket. Much has been said and written in the past about the role of cricket in unifying the Caribbean and our political leaders have never ceased to pay tribute to what the game has done for the region though, these days, those tributes have become rather more sparing. The call for a parting of ways may not have been a serious one but it suggests, worryingly, that a point may have been reached where some amongst us no longer believe in the notion of cricket as a unifying Caribbean force.
Ironically, the essence of the decline has had to do with the failure of The Community to manage cricket as though it were a valuable Caribbean resource rather than simply a sport. Evidence of a strong belief in the value of our cricket would have resulted in the creation of a strong regional mechanism to oversee the development of the game in much the same way as mechanisms have been created to attend to other pressing regional issues that have to do with the development of the region. In sum, it has to be said that our regional leaders have been guilty of undervaluing the importance of Caribbean cricket and of turning their backs on the game at a time when it needs them most. Nothing, not even the sustained, nay disastrous decline in the quality of our regional tournaments has resulted in anything remotely resembling decisive intervention on the part of our political leaders.
No one, of course, would advocate the politicization of Caribbean cricket. At the end of the day, however, the nurturing of the game at the local level through the infusion of resources and policies that result in a building of the game – from ground up – can only come about through the intervention of the respective Caribbean governments. How else can we create facilities that encourage and support the serious playing of cricket at the community, school and club levels? How else can we bring about the desired change?
