The West Indies’ erratic performances in yet another World Cup, culminating in their overnight elimination in the quarter-final in Wellington, is a certain, unsurprising signal for the urgent need for reconstruction with fresh, young recruits.
They have endured several embarrassing thrashings of late, twice at the hands of South Africa and the merciless AB deVilliers. Even those were not as utterly deflating as yesterday’s, in a high-profile match to determine a semi-finalist in the game’s showpiece event.
They wilted under a bombardment of boundaries (11 sixes, 24 fours) from opener Martin Guptill in an innings even more clinical and statistically more imposing than deVilliers’ quick-fire hundreds in Johannesburg in January and in Sydney in the tournament’s pool match.
His unbeaten 237 was the World Cup’s highest score; it was all the more infuriating as the ever too casual Marlon Samuels dropped him at square-leg when four off Jerome Taylor’s third ball of the match.
Against such a background, Friday’s appointment of Phil Simmons, the former West Indies opener, as the new head coach, six months after his predecessor Ottis Gibson was dismissed, comes at an opportune time.
An esteemed national coach of Ireland over the past eight years, Simmons returns to find West Indies cricket in a state of deterioration unrecognizable from his time in the team between 1988 and 1997. His tough challenge is to improve its status.
He immediately confronts the realities that several of the long-established players are on the wrong side of 30, most nearing the end of their careers, and, in contrast, that 23-year-old Jason Holder, the new ODI captain regarded as a long-term investment, needs all the expert help he can get after the dispiriting disappointments of his initiations in South Africa and in the World Cup.
Chris Gayle, for more than a decade the leader of the batting from the top of the order, is 35, a veteran of 103 Tests and 266 ODIs. A chronic back problem kept him out of a Test against Bangladesh last September and the subsequent three Tests in South Africa in December; it required constant medical attention to get him ready yesterday for what was surely his final World Cup appearance.
SulIeman Benn is 33 with similar back issues that affected him during the World Cup. Samuels, also 33, has been in the team for 15 years. Darren Sammy and Dwayne Smith are 31, Lendl Simmons, Denesh Ramdin and Jerome Taylor 30.
At 40, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the rock repeatedly holding the fragile middle order batting together for 20 years, has uncharacteristically struggled for runs in the inaugural season of the first-class Professional Cricket League (CPL). His highest score in 12 innings for the champions Guyana was 77, his average 38.
The clock is ticking for them all.
As it is, Sammy and Simmons, a marginal player in the longer game, have retired from Test cricket, Smith from all first-class cricket. Like Gayle, the ebullient all-rounder Andre Russell, quality spinner Sunil Narine and the currently outlawed pair, Dwayne Bravo and Keiron Pollard, they remain tied to contracts in Indian Premier League (IPL) which directly clashes with the three home Tests against England in April and May. It is a negation of the stated West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) policy of “West Indies first”.
Current Test captain Ramdin and Taylor, who has returned after a lengthy layoff through injury to reclaim his position as main strike bowler, are under contract to the WICB. They appear the only over-30s likely to be still around for the 2019 World Cup.
Simmons will necessarily take time to put his plans in place; his contract is initially for three years. There is just a month before he assembles a squad for a preparation camp prior to the first of the three home Tests against England.
He will be under immediate pressure from an already disenchanted public for his team to deliver against opponents seeking redemption after their first round exit in the World Cup.
An exacting assignment of two Tests and three ODIs against the powerful Australians in the Caribbean follows in June before less stressful tours of Zimbabwe in July and August and Sri Lanka, also having to rebuild after the retirements of Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, in October and November.
By then, the core of Simmons’ new West Indies should have taken shape.
It is essential that he immediately earns the trust of the Test and ODI captains, Ramdin, a fellow Trinidadian, and Holder and liaises closely with chief selector Clive Lloyd. He also needs to let the board realize that he is in charge and it should not meddle in his work.
With a basically new group of players he is unlikely to endure Gibson’s fate. He claimed that board president Dave Cameron gave the reason for his dismissal last August as the senior players reporting that they had lost confidence in him; it was a case of the tail wagging the dog.
Simmons arrives nearing the end of the first season of the CPL with its expanded season from one to two rounds and the installation, for the first time, of 90 full-time professionals from the six traditional teams.
A few promising young batsmen have emerged through the tournament to press others, such as Leon Johnson, Jermaine Blackwood and Jonathan Carter, who didn’t made full use of their chances against Bangladesh, South Africa and in the World Cup.
After 27 of the 30 matches (the final round started on Friday) there were 20 hundreds, an encouraging increase. This is counteracted by the continuing dominance of spinners (seven among the 10 top wicket-takers) and the dearth of genuine fast bowlers in a region where, it seemed, any number could once be seen on any beach hurling down 90 mph thunderbolts.
There is one further point for Simmons to make, perhaps best through the WICB’s cricket committee that includes five Test players. It is for more attention to be paid to the organisation of regional tournaments.
The Under-19s and the Combined Colleges and Campuses (CCC) were added to the six territorial teams for the 50-overs Nagico Pro50 in January; to accommodate sponsors, all matches were scheduled in Trinidad and Tobago where pitches heavily favoured spin.
The eight were divided into pools of four each, leaving just three matches for those eliminated in the first round, a maximum of five to the four which advanced. It was clearly inadequate especially after the weather led to the abandonment of three of the matches.
To accommodate it during January, the CPL was split into two segments, the first November 14 to December 8, the second February 6 to March 23. It was a disjointed arrangement, virtually two separate seasons.
There is plenty on Simmons’ plate as he returns to his roots. There is no time to waste.
