Dear Editor,
Since April, 2011, Australia lost 5 of 9 overseas series, suffering crushing defeats against India, Pakistan and England. Recently the fourth Ashes Test match scheduled to end on the 10th, ended before lunch on the 8th, following a first innings Australia total of 60 in 18.3 overs. Yet Australia is, along with India and England, one of the “big three” of international cricket. Less than a year ago cricket fans felt pity for England on their tour of Australia. The poor Indians fared no better also last year in Australia, and in India’s last recent visit to England, the Indians were beaten soundly. As everyone knows India is almost unbeatable at home.
Everyone in cricket pretends that home advantage does not, more often than not, determine the results of international encounters nowadays. Australian journalists have the gall to express doubts about the good sense of West Indies playing at Melbourne on Boxing Day. What really galls me more than anything else is that some West Indian administrators and journalists not only remain silent, but tend to encourage such insults to their cricketers because they are convinced, with no evidence, that those cricketers do not work hard enough.
It gets worse. For historic reasons that have little to do with their own advocacy, the region has been playing international cricket as a country. One would have hoped that West Indian soccer people, using cricket as an example, would try to make the case to FIFA for group representation, and perhaps have an impact on the game similar to what has happened in cricket. Instead each island (many with populations of less than a hundred thousand) pretends they have a chance of becoming world soccer champions. Sadly every now and again, one hears rumblings from one of those island countries that it should go it alone as a cricket country. They do not find it absurd enough that there is no area in the world where there are more independent countries with economies that are unsustainable by any rational criteria. The leaders all want to hold on to their little fiefdoms, and encourage their followers to believe each little island country is unique in the quality of its territory and its people.
I believe the majority of West Indian sport fans still want to remain a part of the international cricket fraternity, and to be a real competitor. Those responsible for the game can do this only if they develop rational organizational policies that accept the absolute necessity of providing the maximum affordable assistance to talented players. That requires looking at what other countries do, eliminating pettiness, putting the interests of players above all else, and not drawing from the region`s illustrious history, the sole conclusion that their players are naturally more talented than others and should therefore win.
The case for the importance of experience and the need to create opportunities for acquiring such experience is argued for with substantial statistical support in an article ‘Older, Wiser, Deadlier’ in The Monthly Cricketer.
Yours faithfully,
Romain Pitt
