As West Indians, we all want to see the West Indies team succeed. Although they’ve won and lost over the years, starting in 1928, the fans and natives of these attractive Caribbean territories were always optimistic of their teams’ chances.
The reason for this positive outlook was the obvious natural ability of the players and the way in which they approached the game in a positive, attractive and confident manner as compared to the mostly sedate, serious and rather dull style of their English opponents, the main adversary of the early days in the 1930s.
They caught the eye of a few English cricket clubs in northern England and this is where the early West Indians improved their skill of playing the game and developed the art by improving their knowledge, thus achieving the ability to bat, bowl and field to a certain standard for which they already possessed a natural inclination.
From that first huge series victory in 1950, recognition was swift. The world of cricket realised that here was a tiny group of territories with a comparatively tiny population, defeating the English, who taught them the game.
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Nonetheless, at the apex of their learning curve, they dominated the cricket world by winning consecutively for 15 years, from 1980 to 1995, 61 Test matches, not dropping a series. During that time, in 116 games, 29 series, WI lost just 14 games, drew 41 and won 61. After which, the beginning of the slide. There was no preventing the collapse of WI cricket.
There were quite a few changes in WI administration over the years, but it didn’t help. No one could identify the solution to change WI cricket’s fortunes.
When India beat WI in the limited-overs cricket final in 1983, after WI won the two previous World Cups in 1975 and 1979, all three led by Clive Lloyd, India managed to negotiate to have the 1987 World Cup tournament on Indian soil. The massive crowds at the venues for that competition started the popular swing in India to one-day, 50-over cricket. It was 60 overs before that.
However, the substantial change began with the introduction of 20-overs per team games that started in England in 2003. The Indian cricket fans bought into it and within a few years it grew into a mammoth sporting entertainment.
WI cricketers were enticed to play in these leagues for the huge paydays and far less output. With its rapid growth in popularity, other countries took up the franchise. Nevertheless, the West Indian cricketers still maintained their attractiveness to the limited-overs games because of their natural flair to that format. They were always crowd-pullers and the franchises were happy to have these aggressive cricketers on their sides.
CWI vice-president Azim Bassarath believes that by making the coach of the white-ball West Indies teams, Daren Sammy, the coach of the Test teams, would make a terrific change to WI fortunes in Test-match cricket.
Bassarath said: “That is a decision for the coach, to speak to the (T20) players and get them; but you can just imagine if those same players you called (Nicholas Pooran, Shimron Hetmyer, Rovman Powell) play on a Test team, don’t you think we can challenge any international team in the world, even India, Australia and England? It is a work in progress, and let us hope at the end of this project, we can see some, if not all, of them.”
There are undeniable matters that have to be taken into consideration in this present age of cricket when there are three pertinent formats with different applications for various situations.
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In Test matches, what a player needs is concentration. Cricket is such that to be a better team one has to bowl out the other for less runs in two innings. There is no limit to overs, so that a bowler has the time to work on a batsman’s weaknesses. A batsman has to protect his wicket, plus score runs and not get out to the wiles of the bowler and his strategic field-placing. The pitch also plays a big part as it differs from the first day to the last. It’s a battle of wits and not who scores more runs in a limited time at the wicket.
The WI T20 cricketer is not particularly interested in Test cricket. He does not have the mentality and is not capable of the output required! He’s satisfied with T20.
Trinidad and Tobago Newsday
