The West In­dies played the open­ing game of the T20 se­ries against South Africa to their op­ti­mum men­tal and phys­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty. In the four oth­er games, they slinked back in­to their un­der­achiev­ing self, lack­ing in vi­tal­i­ty and un­able to sum­mon the pride and panache, their lega­cy from pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions.

His­to­ri­an, Prof Hi­lary Beck­les iden­ti­fies the fail­ures of West In­di­an so­ci­ety to re­cap­ture that spir­it of na­tion­hood which was the lifeblood of the Wor­rell, Sobers, Lloyd and Richards eras as be­ing at the core of the pre­cip­i­tous de­cline of West In­di­an crick­et.

Richards once said he was pre­pared to die on the pitch in the name of West In­di­an civil­i­sa­tion rather than back down from a con­test against Lillee, Thomp­son and oth­ers. Hall bowled through the lunch and post-lunch pe­ri­od in Eng­land; Mar­shall with one arm did not give in­to the pain he was feel­ing; and when Tony Grieg made that re­mark of mak­ing West In­di­ans “grov­el”, West In­di­an pride and per­son­hood were of­fend­ed; the re­sult was a de­mo­li­tion of Grieg and his team.

This colum­nist wrote at the start of the 20-plus year de­cline, that in the cir­cum­stances of the time when West In­di­an so­ci­ety is over­come with un­der-achieve­ment, cul­tur­al dis­so­nance and wide­spread de­viance of the youth, there is the need for the ad­min­is­tra­tors of West In­dies crick­et to in­ter­vene in a know­ing­ly cre­ative man­ner.

The cre­ation of a sub-cul­ture of ex­cel­lence should be nur­tured, I ad­vo­cat­ed. To use to­day’s ter­mi­nol­o­gy, our crick­eters and crick­et, not on­ly at the Test and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els but at the core of crick­et or­gan­i­sa­tion across the re­gion, is in need of the cre­ation of a so­cio-cul­tur­al “bub­ble” to avoid a COVID-19-like virus en­velop­ing our crick­et.

In the first game against South Africa, the West In­di­an spir­it shone through in bowl­ing, field­ing and con­fi­dent dom­i­nant bat­ting. The im­pact in­tim­i­dat­ed the South Africans. Their team mem­bers felt what it must have been like for Eng­land, Aus­tralia, In­dia, Pak­istan and New Zealand dur­ing the pe­ri­od of West In­di­an dom­i­nance.

In the sec­ond game though, the South Africans re­alised what they ex­pe­ri­enced in the first T20 was a flash of bril­liance that was not em­bed­ded deep in the char­ac­ter and cul­ture of their op­po­nents. They re­alised that if they held still while a storm raged, the storm would blow it­self out. And so they did.

The Aus­tralians will be even more ruth­less in dis­cern­ing and ex­ploit­ing the men­tal weak­ness­es and dispirit­ed­ness of this West In­di­an en­fee­bled brigade. While it is im­por­tant for the West In­dies to come out of the se­ries with a good re­sult, what coach Sim­mons must be hop­ing for is con­sis­tent per­for­mances in which the team can re­alise its po­ten­tial in bat­ting, bowl­ing and field­ing.

The fact is though that the un­der­ly­ing caus­es of the con­tin­u­ing fail­ures of Het­my­er and Pooran and oth­ers is a so­cio-men­tal mal­a­dy that needs to be cured with pro­longed and pro­fes­sion­al treat­ment.

Con­tem­plate how the two young bats­men got out in the last game. They did not know how to ap­proach the chase; they had no self-dis­ci­pline and know-how to con­quer the sit­u­a­tion, so they sim­ply gave in to im­puls­es cir­cu­lat­ing in their emo­tion­al make-up.

Crick­et West In­dies, with the un­der­stand­ing and sup­port of all of us, need to cre­ate a bub­ble of Self-Re­al­i­sa­tion and Cul­tur­al Trans­for­ma­tion.

In mo­ments over the last 20 years, that cham­pi­on West In­di­an self has emerged.

Faced with the chal­lenge of mak­ing the 19 runs in the last over to win the T20 Cham­pi­onships in 2016 in In­dia, Braith­waite and Samuels, with the urg­ing of Sam­my and the rest of the team in the pavil­ion, sum­moned the spir­its of their an­ces­tors.

Samuels, the se­nior bats­man at the non-strik­ers’ end told Braith­waite to aim for the stands. Af­ter the first hit for six, he re­ceived an in­jec­tion of West In­di­an great­ness cours­ing through his veins. Af­ter the third six, Ben Stokes at the bowl­ing crease slumped to his knees and con­ced­ed de­feat. The last six was for the tak­ing, Eng­land had sur­ren­dered to the West In­di­an jug­ger­naut.

The point I am mak­ing here is that West In­di­an na­tion­al­ism, as­sur­ance of self and the un­der­stand­ing that play­ers have the tal­ent to con­quer the world shows them­selves on­ly too fleet­ing­ly. The need is for a re-as­ser­tion of self-con­fi­dence and what Gor­don Greenidge once re­ferred to as West In­di­an “pride” of ac­com­plish­ment to over­come all teams. How is that to be achieved when all is de­scend­ing in­to chaos?

I shall con­tin­ue.