Let me take you back about 10 years. I was living in Grand Cayman, with my Pomeroon background, out in the country on a big piece of land, and I would often take a break from my fruit trees to watch West Indies cricket. At some point back then, I had written a summary of a West Indies match, emailed it to my friend Colin in Jamaica and forgot about it. Two weeks ago he sent me an email with a note: “Remember this?” It was the cricket story. Here’s what I had sent Colin:
“All right, breds. You see what I tell you about the West Indies and lack of concentration? Look what happened today. We chasing 275 runs. Murray gone to a great ball, that happens, but then Wallace gone to a snick – complete lack of focus – so we have 1 run for 2 wickets, but now Chanderpaul and Arthurton batting. Shiv, consistent as ever, gets up to 40-something and then the mind relaxes; he reaches forward defensively but forgets to incline the bat. Fundamental: rising ball, coming off wicket, hitting vertical bat, must provide catch. So Shiv gone, caught and bowled; temporary loss of focus. Hooper comes in, calls a run, and Arthurton takes off like a shot but not in a straight line; he’s swerving left and right, as if he’s chasing a snake. Arthurton ends up at least 10 feet west of the wicket and about a foot short. No focus.
“Hooper concentrates but loses his wicket to good cricket, no complaint there, but now the maths are bad – 130 for 6. Their spinner comes on, pitching it in the rough outside leg – it’s like a street in Kitty out there. Semple, full of ambition, goes forward to sweep, but instead of planting his left foot in line with the ball, he plants it in line with the leg stump, misses, and is bowled behind his back. No focus. Semple is staring at his wicket like it’s some strange object he’s never seen before. Then he examines his bat as if convinced there’s a hole in it. His expression says, ‘Fishcake! How that happen?’
“Next batsman, same bowler, different problem. He goes forward, plants correctly, but he plays the shot with a completely horizontal bat, three feet above the ground. The ball passes under the bat, like a ship going under the Harbour Bridge, and takes leg stump – kadax! No focus. Next over, Nixon McLean moves sideways in the crease to give himself room to hit a ball pitched on the middle stump; nice clean swing, but another horizontal bat, so another ball goes under the bridge and collides with his middle stump. No focus. We’re now 160-something for 9. I lost focus, went outside and cut down a tree. Before Australia, we should hire one of them Zen fellas, lock him up in a room with West Indies for one week, send in roti and swank every four hours, and make them chant ‘Concentration Om’ non-stop.”
That was the cricket story I sent Colin. I reproduce it here to make the point that 10 years later you could sit down and watch the cricket team play now, and although the names would be changed, you could write almost exactly the same story.
In the recent 20/20 regional tournament I saw all these behaviours replicated. Players seem to be out there with their minds on something other than cricket. Batsmen were crossbatting as if marabuntas were attacking them. Several times you could see players setting off on a run apparently unaware that the shortest distance between the two wickets is a straight line; some of them looked like a minibus swerving in Sheriff Street traffic.
With one or two exceptions, the straight bat seems to have gone the way of nylon stockings for women and Elvis sideburns for men. The concept seems to be extinct among our batsmen, and there is rot in the bowling department as well. Several times, balls ended up so far off line that you could sit in Bartica and call “wide”; the wicket keeper, diving at full stretch, would have needed a lacrosse stick to reach them. Haven’t today’s pace men seen Ambrose and Walsh bowl?
Now some of us who are not in love with the 20/20 format are inclined to blame our current woeful play on the frenzy for immediate runs in today’s short game, but the evidence is clear that our cricket decline began before 20/20 was even on the horizon. The rot I described above was a West Indies team performance over 10 years ago. I’ve looked everywhere in search of explanations for it; I have listened to the experts (Cozier; Holding; Atherton, et al) but as none of the theories are convincing, I have come to my own conclusion.
It’s a disease. In the same way as we now have this STD epidemic we didn’t have before, and just as we now have the previously unknown clinical depression, and attention deficit disorder, there is a new disease infecting our Caribbean cricketers and in keeping with other well known ailments – arthritis, phlebitis, meningitis, etc – I have christened this one ‘cricketitis.’ Going in, I admit I have not isolated the cricketitis gene, but here are some of the more common symptoms of the disease:
Players with cricketitis are no longer able to differentiate between vertical and horizontal so they play across the line, with unshakeable confidence and are baffled (like Semple) when they miss the ball. They also lose their sense of direction leaving them running down the wicket like a drunk on Regent Street or bowling several wides in a row. Batsmen with cricketitis become addicted to balls outside the off stump – they go after them like a shark after raw meat – and they apparently lose the ability to focus on anything other than their unsigned WICB
contracts. All the data on the disease is not in yet – a few players, like Shiv, and young Rajendra Chandrika, seem to be able to fight it off – but it’s clearly the explanation for the putrid health our cricket has been in for so long. Now mind you, we must be tolerant. We know people suffering from arthritis and all the other ‘itises’ have not brought it on themselves. Similarly, cricket players are not to be blamed for cricketitis; our boys are simply infected and it’s passed from player to player like pink eye.
And by the way, my disease theory explains very nicely why our world rating has declined in recent years. The reason Sobers and Marshall and the three W’s and Kanhai and Viv Richards (I won’t go on with the list; you know it) played such wonderful cricket, was simply that the disease didn’t exist then; it hit us about 15 years ago and has now become entrenched. If you still have doubts, check our Guyana 20/20 team – a severe case of cricketitis.
