Dear Editor,
There could be no argument that the West Indies Cricket team has historically been selected from the smallest population of any test cricketing country in the world. The individual greatness of players goes back to the days before there was a category described as ‘professional’. There certainly was no commercial promotion, so that there was the consistent white uniform that, except for the colour of the head gear and ‘blazer’ (coat), did not identify the national, nor indeed international team. Fast forward to an age when the ‘customer’, not necessarily required to sit in ‘pavilions’ or ‘stands’, is confused
– misinterpreting ‘SANDALS’ for ‘Holder’
– by outfits colourfully trademarked from neck to shoes, while
The statutory ‘head gear’ of batsmen seems to have anticipated the Covid-19 eruption. Though the bareheaded bowler is barely recognisable, along with the rest of fielding team, except for the man/woman behind the painted stumps. Actual performance is however colourless and indeed painful. In our time of national and international success, matches lasted from three days at the local level up to five days at test level. So that there was clear need for concentration from batsmen against bowlers who had the stamina to focus on bowling up to forty overs in one innings of a test match.
In Guyana such concentration began in our school days – not only at Queen’s, St. Stanislaus and Berbice High, but also in private secondary schools’ competition. To our national side there emerged from ‘Stans’ Brian Patoir, Steve Comacho, the Wight brothers (Leslie and Peter), Charlie Stayers; from ‘Queen’s’: Bruce Pairau-deau, Arnold Gibbons, Leroy Jackman, Aubrey Bishop, Cecil Pilgrim and later Roger Harper. The other Caribbean countries replicated similar educated cricket productivity – Trinidad & Tobago, Barba-dos, Jamaica – each in turn producing West Indies Test Match captains. However productive were then club, national and West Indies players, there was the accepted culture of ‘concentration’ – from beginning to end. Of course one very supportive motivation, in those days, was that the team/s played for country and region regardless of financial remuneration.
So that now one is forced to ruminate on what individually and together drove the consistently high achievement of Clive Lloyd’s and Viv Richards’ Teams’ imperious performances over the extended years of success. Two factors would have been ambition and self-confidence. These could only have been fruitful as the batsmen and bowlers in turn concentrated on vindicating their skills and competencies – in numerous centuries – Worrel, Weekes, Walcott, Sobers, and Rowe. Fast forward again, no one can claim that Twenty Twenty initially, (abbreviated to T20), inspires the critical habit of concentration – except perhaps on playing injudicious strokes, albeit to innocuous ‘dot balls’. One wonders how the Lloyds, Holdings, Richards, Ambroses’ and others of that generation feel about their history being debased by persistently overpaid underperformers, who refuse to reflect on, and copy their examples.
How do current spectators feel about having to endure the insistently disappointing results? What pride do fans (and organisers) now take in the fact that even for the lowest representative level – T20 – they have to import ‘talent’ not only from one another’s country, but ‘mediocrities’ from other continents? From an aging distance one recalls when commentators/ calypsonians poeticised and sang about Ramadhin, Valentine, Sobers, Hall, Griffith; and later Lara. Now one cannot help but wonder what results sponsors obtain from identifying with West Indies cricket’s persistent underperformers. It all seems that an argument can be made for a very fundamental reconstruction of West Indies Cricket. It is time to foreclose on the perpetual embarrassment to the:
■ Management of Cricket West Indies
■ National Team Officials
■ West Indian Cricket Commentators
■ Former West Indian Captains
■ West Indies Cricket Historians
■ National Coaches
■ West Indies Coaches
■ Sponsors
■ Recent West Indies Captains (of all
levels)
Together they must organise a most comprehensive caucus: to agree first of all on how they can arrange groupings to formulate components of a development strategy for cricket nationally and internationally – for the future of our societies’ highly motivational sport – beginning once more in the schools. The exercise should involve the establishment of performance standards, and the formulation of a complementary disciplinary code. The objective must be to make citizens proud again about West Indies Cricket, tired as they are of the daily (ir) rationalisations of demotivating defeats. To those Guyanese who do not recall, heed this plea on behalf of Kanhai, Butcher, Solomon, Kallicharran, Fredericks, Gibbs, Lloyd, Chanderpaul, Sarwan, Christiani, Madray, Trim, amongst others. When next can we look forward to regular centurions, and their double and triple batting partners? Asks this school cricketer!
Sincerely,
E.B. John