This is not a time for chest thumping “I told you so” self praise; it is not time to crow over the failures of players you don’t’ like for insular reasons, rather, it is a time when utmost pressure has to be applied to the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to finally wake up to reality.
The team’s thrashing by New Zealand in their latest catastrophic Test competition display was as predictable as night follows day. Thus it is time for changes and not cosmetic ones rather, real, meaningful types for the sake of everyone from the next 10-year-old aspiring Test player to the vexed West Indies fan about to sever his/her support.
Stakeholders from the common fan, to media practitioners, to Regional Governments, must be implored to impress upon the WICB that the clique type mentality, that influences its handling of Regional cricket, has to end now to prevent further ruin of the Regional game.
The disastrous performances of the senior team didn’t start in the last two series when West Indies endured its worst ever sequence of results, when India secured its biggest ever triumph over the Regional side, with the back-to back innings bashings in two Tests, each ending in three days. Or in New Zealand this past weekend, when rain prevented the home team from delivering a similarly embarrassing 3-0 whipping, which ended 2-0, with both wins finishing well within the allotted five days.
It started way back in 1995 when Australia broke West Indies’ the historic record-breaking run of 15 years of undefeated Test series performances, by triumphing 2-1 away from home.
Instead of buckling down to enact systems with officials who knew best to start the team’s rebuilding process then, the decision makers went the opposite way.
Instead, it became a competition among opportunists, with little or no cricket playing background, to outdo the other to maximize self gain, thus the politics raged to astounding levels of graft and curry-favour, while the team remained stuck in shameful mediocrity.
For 18 long years, West Indies, once undisputed kings in all formats, has not even come close to matching their great rivals Australia from the 1970s and 1980s or even England or Pakistan.
Now, the depressing performances have reached its absolute nadir with India and New Zealand who collectively have been unable to chalk up Test series wins over West Indies in the past, even if you count those triumphs on the fingers of one and a half hands, dishing out their biggest thrashings ever.
And if any of the WICB officials want to deflect criticism by crowing about the team winning titles in the 2004 Champions Trophy, and last year’s World T20 series, it means nothing, amidst 18 years of failure in the competition which really counts at Test level.
Now, headed by the second of successive WICB Presidents of such meagre cricket accomplishments (you wouldn’t find the names of Wycliffe “Dave” Cameron and Julian Hunte in even the most insignificant scorebooks of backwater Regional club teams) it is no surprise West Indies has now recorded its most shameful sequence of Test results.
Any President with a passion for the resuscitation of the Regional team would summon an emergency meeting to announce sweeping changes in every aspect of the team’s operations. Unless decisions are made now from coaches to selectors, to an upgrade of pitches at major venues, the mediocre performances will continue.
A nation’s representative teams are as strong as its domestic structure and with the WICB presiding over an amateur offering of Regional four-day and 50-over competitions yearly, the decline has slipped further below relevance levels.
These days West Indies are not good enough to even to play Test cricket in Australia, the world’s Mecca for all formats of the game. The Regional team’s last tour there 12 months ago amounted to a pitiful series of five 50 over games. It was a very far cry from the days when Sir Frank Worrell’s team was so impressive there in the 1960/61 series, it earned them a ticker tape parade from Australians on the players’ way to the airport, following a brilliant showing which included the sport’s first tied Test. Or when Clive Lloyd’s men were so dominant Down Under, Aussie captain Kim Hughes resigned in tears after a comprehensive hammering in 1988.
Any WICB President of substance would now be planning to lift the standard of its domestic competitions whose teams are so devoid of capable coaches; none of the current West Indies batsmen except Shiv Chanderpaul could possible win places in any Test side outside of lowly Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. Such changes must be commensurate with the replacing of all major venue pitches and upgrading of those at Kensington Oval and Sabina Park, to provide livelier surfaces conducive for proper development of batsmen and fast bowlers.
In the meantime, until the resources for such upgrades are feasible, an all-out campaign is required to have as many Regional players play overseas in the English County teams and or in Australia.
For the last two decades, West Indies teams have comprised amateurs competing against professionals.
Unless our players especially the batsmen, transition to become hardcore professionals, they will continue to be hopeless failures.
It is why the batsmen are as inconsistent as the fickle English weather. It is why they cannot last five days, much less win games against quality opposition, given poor technique, substandard stamina and menial mental strength.
One of the most obvious realities in West Indies cricket history, but little respected, is the factor behind the success of Lloyd’s and Vivian Richards’ teams. They were world beaters because of the professionalism players developed playing for English counties.
No one needs to ask why Chanderpaul is still by far West Indies’ best batsman at age 39, when most professionals are done playing. His stints representing, Lancashire, Derbyshire and Durham provide the answers.
And surely had the selectors over the years desisted from political bartering in selecting teams, whose composition in the three formats, suggest the need to have a player from all six territories represented at least every time regardless of merit, the beatings would’ve been less severe.
I am sorry, but Messers Butts, Haynes and Brown all have to be replaced forthwith, after too many years of ineptitude. Likewise should head coach Ottis Gibson, and Captain Darren Sammy, from the Test squad.
After four years, Gibson has fallen way short of expectations. There has been no improvement in West Indies’ batting, bowling and fielding. This was the case in India and New Zealand where all three departments were so disastrous, Gibson’s contract ought to be history by now. His incompetence could not have been more obvious, when stating that clueless, self-styled “deck” paceman Tino Best, is a good bowler while ostracizing, of all players Chanderpaul over the years, among other missteps.
In Sammy’s case, it has been proven once again that one can swipe so much and no more. Getting dismissed for nought twice in one day when his team followed-on as was the case in the Wellington Test, were as embarrassing as performances come, more so for a captain, whose bowling continues to be as un-penetrative as water on concrete. Not to mention the St Lucian’s tactical emptiness, which every time he steps on the field surely makes Worrell roll in his grave.
Given Sammy’s self professed religious qualities, an immediate resignation by him from the Test team would bestow the team with much needed Christmas blessings.
