Today we take a momentary break from the ongoing soap-opera called Trafigura and the PNP to focus our energies on something equally important - cricket, lovely cricket. Which if you're a West Indian, hasn't been all that lovely in the past 10 years, but here's a thought on how we could bring it back to the days when members of the West Indian cricket team were gods.
Photo Caption: Chris Gayle, one of those players who can take the West Indies back to its glory days - but he needs to play more.
Once every blue moon or so, the West Indies cricket team shows glimpses of what it is capable of just before imploding in another embarrassing display. They are the only team I know that constantly manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They lose so often it seems they go out of their way to lose matches even those where the victory is theirs for the taking.
Take, for example, in the recent DLF Trophy when they were in a commanding position against world champions Australia during the preliminary rounds but ended up losing. They were something like 196 for 1 chasing 273, I believe. Inexplicably, they lost their last nine wickets for just over 20 runs.
Still, they go on to beat Australia in and India in consequent matches and got to the finals. However, once they get there, and again putting themselves into a commanding position, they self-destructed and handed Australia victory. Chasing something like 240 runs, they crumbled to 113 all out. This is a team with the likes of Chris Gayle, Brian Lara, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Dwayne Bravo, players, who despite what the rankings say, are among the best in the world.
Now, here they are again in India as defending champions of the ICC Trophy but having to qualify for the final rounds only because their record had been so abysmal since they won the tournament in dramatic fashion in England two years ago.
So far, they have been impressive dismantling Zimbabwe and Bangladesh the way they are supposed to. They play Sri Lanka later this week and their dwindling fan base must be crossing all their fingers and their toes, hoping for yet another impressive victory.
What, though, is wrong with this talented team? Why can’t the wins come more consistently?
These questions have been debated a billion times since they were toppled as world kingpins by Australia in 1995.
It’s not the coaching, not entirely anyway because they won for a bit under Roger Harper and despite what people think they have shown noticeable improvement since Bennett King’s arrival.
But here’s a thought. Perhaps they just need to play more. Of all the major Test playing nations, the West Indies, I believe plays the least amount of cricket. In between tours, and depending on the time of the year, except for one or two players, most of the West Indies team members do not play enough cricket at a high enough level. And this is why, I feel, they don’t improve.
We all know that no matter how much you practice in training, unless a player can apply what he learns in practice over and over again in ‘match-like’ situations, those training sessions are nothing more than a waste of time. This is why there is physical fitness and then there is ‘match’ fitness, the ability to consistently apply what is learnt in training in actual game situations.
Those following West Indies cricket for more than 20 years should notice that the decline in the West Indies fortunes coincided with the period when the people who run the domestic leagues in England found a way to keep West Indies players out by introducing regulations governing the numbers of overseas players that a county is able to sign.
Prior to that period every member of the West Indian team was playing county cricket, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Joel Garner, Michael Holding, Colin Croft, Joel Garner, you name the player from back then and you could also name the county he represented.
Back then players could practice what they learned under different playing conditions at a sufficiently high level and by doing so, honed their skills to a very fine degree. As a result when they came together, they were a team of players with very developed skills and levels of discipline, virtually invincible.
That is not the case these days.
There are a couple of ways out of this scenario. The West Indies Cricket Board could aggressively campaign to get its players signed by teams in Australia, South Africa and England where the levels of competition are consistently high.
It could also be arranged so that the players could be released in time for them to participate in the local domestic seasons here in the Caribbean thus giving our players at least eight months of solid cricket every year. As a condition of these agreements, players would contribute say 25 per cent of their salaries as kind of an ‘agent’ fee to the WICB.
Under such an agreement everyone benefits.
Or failing that, the WICB could with the help of private businesses across the region, and perhaps from across the world, set up their own domestic league. I am sure the WICB could pitch a convincing argument to R. Allen Stanford and other like-minded businessmen to finance a four or five-month season for say 10 or twelve teams made up of the best in the region and a number of quality players from other countries.
These new stadia being built for the ICC Cricket World Cup would come in handy for such a tournament. If such a competition is run in a manner similar to how American sport franchises are run, each team would within a year or two be self sufficient and revenue could be earned by selling the product to cricket markets like England, Australia, India and Pakistan where the game is more like an addiction. Revenues from television rights could then be evenly distributed among the teams and the WICB.
But even more importantly, such an arrangement would get our players playing enough cricket that would certainly get them ready to take on the very best in the world.
