WI Cricketing shame continues…even at home
News Flash!
South Africa wipes the floor with the West Indies cricket team!
That was the only way that this Columnist could describe the humiliation that every loyal West Indies cricket fan must have felt following what transpired in the first test match between the regional side and South Africa, in St Lucia.
The West Indies cricket team on Saturday last succumbed to a multi-ethnic trio of bowlers from South Africa as the latter destroyed any hopes the regional side may have had of showing that they are making progress in rebuilding.
The issue was not just the matter of losing the match. We have had plenty of that in the decades that we have been amongst the test playing nations.
It was all about the manner in which the team was resoundingly trashed while playing at home, before our own people.
South Africa came to the Caribbean in the midst of the Covid pandemic and completely annihilated the home team by an innings and 63 runs, using only two and a half of the five days allotted for the test match.
There was a time when West Indies cricketers did this and more to the best test cricketing nations of the world. Now, however, the players and leaders of the sport in the region appear not to have a strong enough sense of history to allow them to feel decidedly ashamed of what has just transpired.
There is no doubt that the West Indies cricket team can always find ways to descend to new lows. If we keep this up, we will eventually find ourselves without the leading teams in the sport ever wanting to play against us.
We have always been able to show the world the very best as well as the very worst we can conjure up when playing the game.
The first test revisited
Following the conclusion of the series against Sri Lanka, played in the Caribbean, it suddenly appeared that our cricket leadership, at almost all levels, deluded themselves into marketing a view that we had somehow found a winning formula.
We were given the impression that we could take on any team.
Of course, the now-deceased, Earl Robertson always enjoyed interjecting a dose of reality whenever cricketing authorities and enthusiasts alike, eagerly deluded themselves about the fortunes of the regional team after any sort of victory.
Robertson must be turning in his grave again.
‘Bring on the South Africans’, we appeared to have been suggesting following our combat with Sri Lanka.
Well, the South Africans came and in the very first of two test matches, totally outplayed us in every department of the game. No one seems to have been embarrassed.
The embarrassment began with the regional team struggling in the first innings to muster 97 runs. Yes! 11 players could only scrape 97 runs against the South Africans in the first innings.
It is not worth mentioning any of the scores made by a West Indies player in the first innings. Instead, kudos must go to South Africa’s bowlers who took us apart.
Gros Islet – South Africa completed an innings and 63 runs victory over West Indies about 35 minutes past the scheduled lunch interval on the third day of the first Test at the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground in St. Lucia, to take a 1-0 lead in the two-Test series.
Lungi Ngidi took an amazing five-wicket haul off 13.5 overs for just 19 runs. That works out to be less than four runs per wicket.
Anrich Nortje claimed four wickets for 35 runs off 11 overs, while Kagiso Rabada took one wicket for 19 runs off 10 overs.
The second innings performance of the West Indies layers was only marginally better. That some in the media have held Chase aloft for making 62 runs reveals just how much we are all too eager to clutch at straws.
The entire team crawled to a total of 162 and once again, it is the South African bowlers who should be lauded.
Kagiso Rabada bagged five wickets for 34 runs off 20 overs while Anrich Nortje earned figures of three for 46 off 14 overs. Finally, Keshav Maharaj claimed two for 25 off 11 overs.
On the one occasion that South Africa took to the crease, the team amassed 322, led by an impressive 141 not out. Aiden Makram added 60.
There was nothing in the performance of the West Indies team that appears worthy of commendation. That is an unfortunate reality.
Traditional responses…again
As we have grown accustomed, the team’s leadership gave what has become our traditional responses.
For the coach’s part, it is once more about the players’ need to stay focused. His analysis seemed to focus on what he considered a rather injudicious approach to the game, especially when it came to their turn to bat.
But the fielding was no better, generally and neither was the bowling.
The fact of the matter is that there may well be a need for a more clinical analysis to be undertaken. It may well be that the coach while identifying weaknesses in the players, may not be able to adequately correct them or identify and train players with the capacity that is currently lacking in those who don the West Indies team uniform.
Captain Brathwaite’s analysis is no better than that of coach Simmons.
While we may agree with Brathwaite that what transpired is something that should quickly be forgotten, he appears to have missed the point that he was only recently heralded as ‘the next best thing to slice bread’ in so far as leading the current crop of players on the field of play. It was this analysis that caused the authorities to have Brathwaite replace another Barbadian, Holder, to lead the team.
Given the team’s poor performance against the South Africans in the first test, cricket analysts are now forced to do a re-think of the rationale given when they supported putting Brathwaite at the helm instead of Holder or anyone else for that matter.
The problem, whether we like it or not is that we are not eager to come to terms with the truth that stares us in the face – we have not yet been able to establish a leadership structure nor have we been able to create a fighting unit to take the field with confidence.
The current players do not appear to know and understand the regional team’s history of struggle and this at a time when money was not in the sport and/or when Kerry Packer started the cricket revolution.
There is no one on the current West Indies team that has the daring of a Viv Richards or the charisma of a Malcolm Marshall.
There is no player on the team with the flair of a Gary Sobers or Brian Lara.
Money comes easily to the current crop of players. Some may suggest that it comes ‘too easily’.
There is no professional ethic that is brought to bear on the players such as we see positively impacting the players we witness in the NBA or American Football and Baseball Leagues.
While the VPL attracted sport-hungry enthusiasts to the Arnos Vale playing field for the final, few in attendance would have taken the time to analyse what a 10/10 competition does to our local cricketers who have fundamental challenges lasting a four-day encounter, let alone a five-day test match. But this is what passes for the sport today.
Calamity in abundance
It was not so long ago that after defeating a paltry Sri Lankan team in the Caribbean, the region’s leaders, including the coach and captain, immediately returning to singing as though we had triumphed. At the time we reminded readers of the several occasions in the past that this has happened. It has so often been said that the team has turned the corner, only to run smack into a Mack truck.
The unfortunate reality is that the sport’s leadership in the Caribbean are behaving much more like the political leaders around them.
We are ever mindful that while athletics has been head and shoulders above all other sports played in the region, when it comes to international acclaim and the lifting of the national flags around the world, but the CARICOM heads of government found it most appropriate to establish a Cricket Committee from among their membership. Not a Sports Committee but a Cricket Committee.
We should also be mindful that when Chris Gayle was out of the ‘good graces’ of West Indies cricket authorities, it was a prime minister that boasted of having provided the opportunity to send a place to bring him to St Vincent and the Grenadines, where discussions were held at a ‘high’ level, that eventually saw him return to ‘good grace’. That appears to be the intent of the politicians in respect of the influence they appear to desire for cricket.
Let us all be hopeful that they never develop a desire to do so for other sports.
For now, we watch, haplessly, the continued demise of West Indies cricket even as the Cricket Committee of the CARICOM heads of government convince themselves that somehow, what they are doing, is in some way, helping.
