WATCHING the poor hapless second string West Indian cricket team find their feet against Bangladesh spinners was dismaying, to say the least. As it is West Indies cricket is wallowing in a longish trough of mediocrity, falling from the heights that one had got accustomed to seeing them straddle with aplomb and flair. Like Gargantua, they bestrode the cricketing world for aeons. And now this. Clueless against Bangla tweakers.
Lala Amarnath was quite fond of me and a couple of times that he came to Bombay; I had the privilege of chatting extensively with him. Not given to talking too much to outsiders, strangely he took a shine to me. I remember when he was visiting when the Graham Gooch helmed English side visited India in 1992-93. An Indian spin troika comprising Anil Kumble, Venkatapathy Raju and Rajesh Chauhan had them hobbling around as if they were cats on a hot a tin roof. Watching a game at Jimmy’s (Mohinder Amarnath) house in Andheri West, Lalaji was exasperated. Short of berating the Englishmen who were playing as if they had two left feet and the bowlers were armed with grenades and not cricket balls, Lalaji would look at the telly and say, “Come up to the pitch of the ball, don’t play back or half cock, meet the ball head on – smother the spin or execute a stroke through the covers.” Lalaji knew a thing or two about cricket and captaincy.
He was India’s first Test centurion and he played out of his skin while batting against the famed Hedley Verity. The neophytes in the West Indies team are simply at sixes and sevens while tackling the Bangla spinners. What is happening in West Indies cricket is a travesty. It is also a reflection of the times. With cricketers around the world bathing in moolah, West Indian cricketers probably feel that they have missed the bus. Dwayne Bravo in an interview to the Trinidad and Tobago Express has compared West Indies cricket organisation capabilities to his club and suggested that the latter is far more disciplined and efficient. West Indies cricket has been suffering for far too long. The quality of cricketers coming through the assembly line is poor and sad. It is said that basketball is en vogue in the Caribbean now and the influence of the game from the US next door is playing an important role in weaning away the youth. Satellite television is reportedly behind this move. Expressing his disillusionment over the state and standard of administration in West Indian cricket Bravo has fulminated against the officials. His litany of woe tells you about the shocking state of disrepair in West Indies cricket.
Bravo’s common refrain that ‘they just do things badly’ says it all. So, where did the West Indies cricket go wrong after being world beaters for ever so long? Between India’s glorious tour of the West Indies in 1976 and Australia’s tour of the Caribbean in 1995, the West Indies never lost a Test series, barring the controversial tour to New Zealand in 1980. Such was the swagger, arrogance of the all conquering and domineering West Indies team. Ironically the West Indies is not one nation but a conglomeration of different flags and nations in the Caribbean. Despite that and captaincy controversies and a constant tug of war between Guyana and Barbados, West Indies cricket was given direction by Sir Frank Worrell. He bound islanders from disparate nations into one solid and powerful cohesive whole.
At Trinidad when India scaled Mount 400 in the fourth innings, Clive Lloyd was given three spinners to bowl India out – Rafiq Jumadeen, Inshan Ali and Albert Padmore. All three failed as Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Vishwanath aided by Anshuman Gaekwad, Jimmy Amarnath and Brijesh Patel trumped the Windies. This Test match and the West Indies being tormented by Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson Down Under (1975-76) when they were thrashed 5-1) convinced Lloyd that the only weapon to unleash against all comers on all surfaces was genuinely quick, hostile bowling. This is a tactic that he and later Viv Richards employed effectively. Four pronged pace attacks, with bowlers coming off conveyor belts, one more fearsome than the other were unleashed by the West Indies. Only brief interludes when the Kerry Packer whirligig disrupted world cricket and the West Indies sent out second string sides was the suzerainty and hegemony challenged. Even in the series where Lillee and Thomson blitzed away the Windies in 1975-76, Viv Richards opening in the last two Tests gave glimpses of his greatness with scores of 30, 101, 50 and 98.
Finally, when the West Indies looked like picking up the pieces after vanquishing England at home and reaching the semi finals of the T20 World Cup in England, the players strike has come as a crippling blow to what was beginning to look like a settled side. Brian Charles Lara tried desperately for years to turn around the fortunes of a team with diminishing returns and rewards, but one man alone cannot make a difference. Now that West Indies have two genuine quicks in Fidel Edwards and Jerome Taylor, a good left arm spinner in Suleiman Benn and three–four excellent top order batsmen – Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and a robust all rounder in Dwayne Bravo, the players strike couldn’t have come at a worse time. The biggest problem facing West Indies cricket is the complete absence of administrative grasp and money.
As Bravo explains in his scathing indictment of West Indies officials, cricketers are on their own, there is nobody to look after them and nobody to tend to their needs. There have been calls for strikes earlier also, most notably when Brian Lara was in the saddle. The issue remains the same – money. For instance in 1998 just before the tour to South Africa, the players went on a flash strike. Brian Lara was sacked as captain when the players revolted over pay delays but was reinstated after four days of talks broke the impasse. West Indies were given a drubbing – 5-0 vanquishing in the Test series and losing the one dayers 6-1.
We have seen how Zimbabwean cricket has disintegrated after some of its key players took umbrage against head of state Robert Mugabe. They were a competitive side, with some fine players like the Flower brothers, Heath Streak et al. We have seen how cricket is suffering in Pakistan due to the country’s security environment. Though the T20 World Cup win has provided some fillip, the team’s performance levels against Sri Lanka in the ongoing series leave something to be desired. Pakistan even at the best of times, other than under the inspirational Imran Khan have been a fractious unit. Now we have the West Indians in disarray. As it is there are only nine Test playing nations and if more and more fall by the wayside, then this beautiful game will only suffer and fall off the cliff.
There was a time when it was said that cricket was tattooed to every West Indian’s heart. Tumult has become a defining word in West Indian cricket lexicon. Those dark days of the 2003 World Cup when Carl Hooper was captain, the even darker days when Jimmy Adams was at the helm were only rescued and overshadowed by the personal exploits of Brian Lara. There was a time when the Guyana vs Barbados rivalry drove cricketing excellence in West Indies and world cricket. When Rohan Kanhai and Sir Garfield Sobers shone like beacons of light. They followed the three Ws – Worrell, Everton Weeks and Clyde Walcott and left a lasting impression in the sands of time. Lloyd, Richards, Greendige, Haynes, Kalicharran took the baton from these great bastmen. Then of course, there was Lara, that champion batsman with a touch and presence that can only be called his own. He was the Prince. If Hall and Griffith were deadly and dangerous, then Lloyd’s fantastic array of fast bowlers put everything else seen in cricket in the shade – Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner, Ian Bishop, Colin Croft, Courtney Walsh, Curtley Ambrose and a long line of others. It is this tradition and heritage that cold commerce is ensuring that we lose.
I hope it doesn’t happen. Cricket will be poorer without a quality West Indies team. It needs to be resuscitated in double quick time.
