Col­in Croft

Note please, that Aus­tralia's coach Mick­ey Arthur re­mind­ed, when his team ar­rived weeks ago for Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al's (T20I) and One day In­ter­na­tion­als (ODI), that, "West In­dies should not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed!" The for­mer South African coach was so cor­rect that, un­be­liev­ably, West In­dies could share the Test se­ries too, lat­er this week. That is no mean feat. Few ex­pect­ed West In­dies to be in this pleas­ant po­si­tion against what was sup­posed to have been a "su­pe­ri­or" team in all as­pects and for­mats of the game. They shared T20I's 1-1, and ODI's 2-2, with one tied. Now, all West In­dies must do to draw the Test se­ries is win Test No 3. Il­lus­tra­tive­ly, the on­ly tru­ly sea­soned West In­dies play­ers se­lect­ed so far, from those avail­able, are the in­domitable Shiv Chan­der­paul, and still per­se­ver­ing, if un­be­liev­ably un­lucky, Fi­del Ed­wards. Wrapped around these are play­ers who all try hard, some who seem con­fused, and a few who are be­low par. I hope that no-one is be­ing car­ried away with these or­di­nary but en­cour­ag­ing achieve­ments, as this Aus­tralian tour­ing team to West In­dies may have mas­sive rep­u­ta­tions - all hype - but no re­al bite! Like West In­dies, ex­cept for some sea­soned per­form­ers, they too have been be­low what is ex­pect­ed. The vet­er­ans, Aus­tralia's Michael Hussey and West In­dies' Chan­der­paul, have been so far ahead of the rest of their re­spec­tive teams that all in each team should sim­ply ob­serve them at the crease, then at least try to con­cen­trate and fo­cus on jobs at hand, as they do. Mike and Shiv have been phe­nom­e­nal! In that mag­nif­i­cent First Test, in Bar­ba­dos, which Aus­tralia won, by three wick­ets, Chan­der­paul made 103 and 12; Hussey 48 and 32. In Test No 2 at the Queen's Park Oval, when both teams were in se­ri­ous trou­ble at spe­cif­ic times in the match, the "old men" pros­pered as if they on­ly re­al­ly thrived on and rel­ished the chal­lenge.

When Hussey came to the crease in the first in­nings, Aus­tralia were wob­bling at 167-4. When he made his first er­ror, dis­missed for 73, his team was a re­spectable 297-7. He must have known that a first in­nings score over 300 could, pos­si­bly would, be a match-win­ning in­nings. Hussey bat­ted bril­liant­ly! Chan­der­paul's and West In­dies' case was worse. "Tiger" came to the crease with West In­dies on their knees, 38-3. When he too was flum­moxed in­to his er­ror by Nathan Ly­on, he had made 94, West In­dies with­in strik­ing dis­tance of Aus­tralia's 311, at 231-6. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, his team soon ca­pit­u­lat­ed bad­ly too. Hussey and Chan­der­pual have proved their al­most in­vin­ci­bil­i­ty, ef­fec­tive­ness, use­ful­ness and val­ue as on­ly few any­where in world crick­et can do. Ke­mar Roach and Ben Hil­fen­haus have al­so done quite well, with the ball, for their re­spec­tive teams. At least these rel­a­tive youths are show­ing their met­tle too. Roach is fast ap­proach­ing cult sta­tus. Get­ting ten wick­ets at Queen's Park is not at all easy to do. On­ly few West In­di­ans have achieved that. Roach al­ways looks pur­pose­ful, fo­cused and de­ter­mined. While some ques­tion his lan­guid, lethar­gic ap­proach to the bowl­ing crease, his mis­siles nor­mal­ly strike home well. Hil­fen­haus is dif­fer­ent, de­pend­ing much more on nor­mal swing, es­pe­cial­ly on these life­less West In­dies pitch­es - if you are a fast bowler-to get bats­men out. With lead­en feet, West In­dies top or­der bats­men have, time and again, been bad­ly found out against sus­tained swing, even if Hil­fen­haus is not that quick. So, I am con­vinced that In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) com­pris­es of per­son­nel who had no toys as youths. Their much pub­li­cised and ter­ri­bly ma­ligned De­ci­sion Re­view Sys­tem (DRS) un­less ful­ly-I mean 100 per cent-im­ple­ment­ed, with all of its com­po­nents, sim­ply, there is no oth­er way to put this, does not work!

Worse than that is that match of­fi­cials seem ful­ly out­wit­ted or is that dimwit­ted, by their own im­por­tance. How could any pre­sid­ing match of­fi­cial de­cide that, if this so su­per DRS is not op­er­a­tional, that the damned crick­et should not go on? Where does crick­et get these ar­ro­gant in­com­pe­tents from? As for­mer West In­dies fast bowler Michael Hold­ing said on com­men­tary for Test No 2, Queen's Park Oval, "Test crick­et has been played since 1877/78, with West In­dies play­ing from 1928. How come match of­fi­cials can­not start a game-day on time be­cause of mal­func­tion­ing of a tool in­vent­ed in 2008?" How in­deed! Imag­ine this then! You are trav­el­ling over some "pond"-At­lantic, In­di­an or Pa­cif­ic Ocean, or even Caribbean Sea-when cap­tain or co-pi­lot of your Boe­ing 777, or type which Caribbean Air­lines will soon use to fly to Lon­don in June; Boe­ing 767; in­forms that one of the two main en­gines had failed. Do you think that the flight crew would sim­ply sug­gest then that, "we all gone now dead?" Far from that! Train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence kick in, se­quences that be­gun with sin­gle-en­gine air­craft up to big jets. Not al­ways eas­i­ly, they do what they must do. They fly the air­craft on one en­gine, un­til they can land safe­ly. How dare these id­iots that run in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et de­cide that they, as im­pu­dent as they are, could not start crick­et on time with the sun siz­zling down be­cause there was no elec­tric­i­ty to run the min­i­mal parts of the DRS sys­tem used at Queen's ParK Oval? What gives these peo­ple the right to des­e­crate crick­et at all thus? Um­pires have been do­ing their du­ty from clubs and schools to Test crick­et for eons. While it does take some time to re­spect and trust in­ter­na­tion­al um­pires, most are ful­ly re­spect­ed and trust­ed, as most play­ers know that, re­gard­less, um­pires are try­ing their best, even if they some­times make mis­takes too.

For high­light­ing the very ob­vi­ous lim­i­ta­tions of pre­cious, present DRS sys­tem as used for West In­dies ver­sus Aus­tralia, West In­dies coach Ot­tis Gib­son has been fined – pun­ished – for telling the ICC that their sys­tem does not work. There re­al­ly is some mer­it to that say­ing that "the law is an id­iot!" Or is that ICC? As a great friend of mine who cap­tains B-777's reg­u­lar­ly over 'ponds', sug­gest­ed, "If I ran my flights as ICC runs world crick­et, I and many would be dead every week!" Enough said! It re­al­ly is quite stu­pid that ICC choos­es to pun­ish crick­et­ing per­son­nel who ac­tu­al­ly try to bring this game from dis­re­pute. Any­way, we can on­ly hope that Wind­sor Park in Do­mini­ca pro­vides a sparkling track with con­sis­tent bounce and speed. West In­di­an spin­ners, none of them, are present­ly good enough to dis­miss this Aus­tralian team twice in one game so let the more suc­cess­ful fast bowlers have some help, please! West In­dies bats­men need more con­sis­ten­cy than they have pro­duced. Dar­ren Bra­vo and per­haps re­cent­ly re­prieved Nars­ingh De­onar­ine have had starts but not con­tin­u­ing on. The younger top or­der bats­men have all strug­gled while cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my should, by now, re­alise that swip­ing is dumb! The Third Test may again come down to Chan­der­paul and Hussey for re­spec­tive teams but if West In­dies could win this fi­nal Test, it would bode well for im­me­di­ate and dis­tant fu­ture too, since it would in­di­cate that re­silience, team uni­ty and un­der­stand game pa­ra­me­ters are get­ting in­to their minds well. En­joy!