West Indies coach Ottis Gibson just does not get it.
It will be very difficult for his side to win the upcoming International Cricket Council’s Twenty20 World Cup which commences next week.
The West Indies lost their opening warm up game against Sri Lanka on Thursday by nine wickets to hosts Sri Lanka and Gibson has made light of the defeat describing the match as just a warm up game.
“It was an opportunity to give other people a chance. Obviously you’d like to win every game you play but the reality is this is just a warm up,” Gibson said afterward.
Gibson is right in a sense it was just a warm up game but where he is wrong is in suggesting or giving the impression that the outcome of the game did not matter and that the outcome should be different if the two teams do meet in the actual tournament.
If Gibson in fact believes the latter then he will be making the same mistake the West Indies made in the 1983 World Cup competition when Kapil Dev’s India beat them in the final.
One will recall that India had beaten the West Indies in an earlier preliminary encounter and as they say the rest is now history.
Perhaps Gibson is of the opinion that his star laden side can turn it on and off whenever it matters.
One would hope that Gibson’s West Indians are not fooled by the favourites tag heaped on the team.
Last month none other than former India skipper Saourav Ganguly picked the West Indies team to win the upcoming competition.
“West Indies are a powerhouse (in this format),” an impressed Ganguly told reporters at an event organized by tournament broadcasters ESPN-Star Sports.
“They have guys like Chris Gayle, (Kieron) Pollard, Dwayne Smith, Andre Russel and (off-spinner) Sunil Narine. They also have a good fast bowling attack with Fidel Edwards and Kemar Roach, all bowling at 90 miles an hour,” Ganguly added.
One hopes that Gibson has not taken Ganguly’s obviously flattering comments to mean that his side will walk all over the opposing teams and lift the trophy at the conclusion.
The fact of the matter is that no team is going to roll over simply because the face a team with the likes of Gayle, Pollard, Smith, Narine, Dwayne Bravo, Russell and company.
The match is won by the team that executes better on the said day. It’s as simple as that. If there is a truism in cricket it is that it is a game of glorious uncertainties.
Star-studded batting line ups have been known to fall very cheaply and very weak teams have been known to overcome much stronger ones simply by playing as a team or from the exploits of one or two individuals be it batsman or bowler. West Indies grouped with Australia and Ireland should easily qualify for the Super Eights in this the fourth staging of the biannual competition.
They play Australia in a Day/Night encounter on September 22 at R. Premadasa Stadium, the largest of the three venues with a seating capacity of 35,000 and play Ireland at the same venue two days later.
The winner of Group B will play the runner up of Group A while the winner of Group A will play the runner up of Group B.
As it stands the West Indies are almost certain of qualifying for the Super Eight stage either as winner of the group or as the runners up.
Unless Ireland gets lucky, there seems to be no way that a side that possess the World’s best T20 batsman in Chris Gayle and his support staff should lose to Ireland whose batting should rely on Ed Joyce, skipper William Porterfield, Stuart Thompson and wicketkeeper Niall O’Brien. And while the West Indies bowling appears to be the weaker of the two main departments, the likes of Roach, Ravi Rampaul, Fidel Edwards, Narine, Russell and company should easily be too much for Ireland.
The Australians however are a different kettle of fish reaching the 2010 finals held in the West Indies before losing to defending champions England.
But even if the West Indies lose their opening game to Australia, they should get past Ireland.
After that, it’s anybody’s game.
