The recent debacle and the state of West Indies cricket

THE West Indies cricket team has just wrapped up another test series and predictably was badly beaten by a New Zealand team that could hardly be described as top flight. In the first test our boys were bounced out in the first innings by Neil Wagner; and although there was some resistance in the second innings, we invariably collapsed to hand the Kiwis an easy victory.

Not much changed in the second test—the short ball was again mostly responsible for our undoing. On the other hand, our bowlers struggled to dismiss the Kiwis in the very conditions under which our batsmen succumbed. Our opponents managed big scores in both tests as their batsmen, including the lower order, punished our bowlers.

Some will ask, what’s new? Since our surrender of the unofficial world title to Australia in 1995, the West Indies have struggled to put together a winning formula. It’s been a long, dismal period for our cricket inside and beyond the boundary. We seem to have tried everything to stem the tide, but the problems have only multiplied. There have been moments when our boys seemed to have turned the corner only to swiftly return to the old losing ways.

We have not been short of analyses and recommendations. Blame has been cast around in reckless abundance and in the process many careers have been destroyed. Many have blamed the administrators, but while there is much to said of their arrogance and incompetence, their conduct can hardly be the sum total of our continued decline.

Others have blamed the cricketers. Again, while our so-called stars have often showed that they lack the necessary commitment to the larger society, a prerequisite for success in the past, it would be inaccurate to lay the responsibility for our inability to win squarely at their feet.

The truth is, our performance on the cricket field is directly and indirectly a reflection of the condition in the larger society. The more the Caribbean region has veered away from its nationalist aspirations, the more difficult it has become to convince the populations that the region means anything beyond narrow individualism.

As our governments have been forced or surrendered to the inevitability of the new neo-liberal global order, the notion of nation-building beyond the macro-political economy has been abandoned. The welfare of families and communities are no longer seen as the responsibility of the state and families and communities no longer see their survival as linked to the collective.

It is from these disconnected, alienated communities that we recruit our cricketers. Is it any wonder, then, that in a team sport which requires a sense of the role of the individual in the outcome of the collective and vice versa, that we have been found wanting? We continue to produce players of distinction, but their exploits have not been translated into the success of the team.

The great Brian Lara comes to mind in this regard—neither his batsmanship nor leadership amounted to West Indies glory. Chris Gayle has just declared himself “the greatest,” no doubt referencing his unparalleled exploits in the shortest version of the game. But, it may not even matter to Gayle that he is the greatest in an era when West Indies cricket is at its weakest.

Our selectors have shown poor judgement of talent; hence, we field wrong combinations of players. Take, for example, a Jermaine Blackwood who is persisted with in test matches while he is barred from the shorter versions where his style and temperament are better suited. Or our own Ronsford Beaton, who is inexplicably banished from the longer version of the game by both Guyanese and West Indian selectors when his speed would be an asset in any decent test team. In addition, these seems to be no policy regarding young Shimron Hetmeyer and Alzari Joseph, who from all indications are extremely talented.

There is no doubt that there are some practical things that can be done to at least bring our cricket up to competitive standards. But at the end of the day, we have no power to stop our better players from preferring to play lucrative club cricket rather than for the West Indies. We also seem to have little power to determine who coach our cricketers and oversee a possible rebirth of our glory.

We now have foreigners coaching our cricketers and managing our cricket—there is nothing more ironical than that. And It is not as if we don’t have suitable West Indians to perform those functions. And what to do about players who evidently cannot read the game, who play as if their heads are somewhere other than on the field of play? The future continues to look bleak.