By Orin Davidson
For an undistinguished, low achieving West Indies cricket team, the shock and outrage being expressed around the region at the omission of Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard for the upcoming World Cup, is surprising.
Whether Bravo and Pollard are being victimized/penalized or not, fans and followers of West Indies cricket should hardly shed tears because of the glaringly obvious.
The West Indies cricket team has been an abysmal failure in most formats of the game since being dethroned as World Champions in Tests in 1995. Bravo and Pollard have been contributors to the losing squads for as long as most of the other players.
And Bravo didn’t enhance his image by masterminding, with the allegedly strong support of Pollard, that shameful, financially crippling tour abandonment of India last year which lots of fans want to forget.
Even if the hopeless West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) allowed itself to be dictated to by politicians because of its inability to clear the mess afterwards by itself, it would be naïve to conclude the tour- destroyers would continue to enjoy kid gloves treatment in the aftermath.
So if the WICB selection panel sees the need for change to end the longstanding mediocre team displays, beginning with the run-up to and for the World Cup, it is easy to conclude who the first targets would be.
Bravo and Pollard are by no means game changers. They are not the Brian Laras, Viv Richards, Malcolm Marshalls or even Lloyds of their respective eras.
They can be rightfully cast as part of a big bunch of losers, stuck in a team rated much closer to the bottom of the ODI world rankings at number eight, than the top.
So Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves can scream blue murder until his face attains that hue, the WICB can stick to it guns and deny victimization and choose to revamp the squad as its panel sees fit.
Most noteworthy, the decision to wield the axe was made by a team including none other than Clive Lloyd, who plotted West Indies’ legendary rise to world champions in the late 1970s and ‘80s, as well as Courtney Walsh, whose playing talent helped them stay there for 15 years.
Lloyd’s batting exploits and leadership skills, were not his sole contributions to that team, he was a shrewd talent judge which significantly contributed to that Dream Team’s composition.
With West Indies last best World Cup performance dates back 36 years ago when Lloyd led the squad to a repeat of its title winning display four years prior to 1979, and with their prospects unlikely to even match the quarter final elimination last time around in 2011, the selection panel had free reign to chop and change.
So even if Bravo is the best of a poor lot of West Indies all-rounders, it should not be too shocking he is mandated to return to the drawing board to overhaul his game.
You don’t engineer mass walkouts of competitions unless you have Lara’s stature and Bravo and Pollard are as close to that as a lifetime away.
That is why Lloyd can stress that the two players were not victimized and West Indies Cricket Board president Wycliff ‘Dave’ Cameron can deny they were penalized.
Although Bravo recorded the best statistics in 2014 among the team’s utility players, Lloyd has stated that an overload of all-rounders in the team cannot continue and preferred the younger Andre Russell and ex captain Darren Sammy to Bravo and Pollard.
Lloyd has made no secret of his admiration for Russell’s natural talent and it would not be surprising if he gets a debut Test call-up soon.
Team commitment could have been a significant factor in the selectors’ deliberations, too. Sammy has been a dutiful servant of the team, though not with great distinction, since accepting West Indies captaincy in 2010 when others shied away. Coupled with his relative effective finishing, batting low in the order, he is given a longer leash to cement a place in the 50 overs lineup.
Every since assuming his role last year, Lloyd has been calling for loyalty to the Regional team amidst the plethora of Twenty20 competition commitments some players including Bravo and Pollard have made around the world.
On the appointment of inexperienced 23- year- old Jason Holder as team captain, for which Lloyd and his panel have been showered with harsh criticism, the former captain pointed out that the young Barbadian fast bowler had passed up playing in the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL) T20 series, to represent his country.
Though it was a stunning appointment of which only Lloyd, Walsh and Courtney Brown seemingly could fathom the wisdom in making it obviously fits in with the new WICB’s West Indies first policy.
But the hard hitting batsman Lloyd did not become one of two most revered of West Indies captains ever, for being a myopic conservative talent judge. As captain he influenced the selection of Michael Holding – a raw 21-year-old paceman with a mere 13 Shell Shield wickets from three seasons comprising a handful of games for the 1975/76 Australia tour. In the ensuing 12 years, Holding established himself as one of West Indies’ best ever fast bowlers. Similarly, an unknown Jeffrey Dujon, among others, was hand- picked by Lloyd and went on to become West Indies’ most productive wicketkeeper/batsman.
So if he feels Holder is good captaincy material who are us to think otherwise.
And for those who have been recklessly insinuating senility influenced decisions on Lloyd’s part, the shoe is ideal for the other foot as West Indies’ current best batsman in all formats was brought back into the team by the “Super Cat” based purely on his wisdom. Marlon Samuels’ three centuries, and two half centuries within the last three months in competition against India and South Africa, all away from home, would’ve been lost to the team had he not been reinstated immediately upon Lloyd’s appointment late last year.
Samuels has not stopped singing Lloyd’s praises since.
So based on strong evidence, Lloyd must be given the benefit of the doubt with those World Cup selections.
Cricket is not a popularity contest, thus those critics whose thinking are clouded by sentiment and agendas, ought to wise up.
Bravo and Pollard are two of West Indies most popular players due more to style rather than substance. With his flambouyant on-field celebrations and forays into music entertainment, Bravo has become a bit hit in the Region. Pollard’s infrequent power hitting in T20 competition and general fielding acrobatics are good for the cameras, but in Lloyd’s view not substantial enough for West Indies.
More often than not “The skipper” has been correct with his decisions over the years and is more likely to sing “You can’t keep a good man down”, a few years down the road rather than Marvin Gaye’s “My Mistake”.
