Col­in Croft

It has been sug­gest­ed that 'the cap­tain­cy of the West In­dies crick­et team is a poi­soned chal­ice.' That might be so, but how did we get to where we are now in cap­tain­cy? With Brain Lara's re­cent rel­e­vant com­ments that 'a cap­tain is as good as his play­ers' he cer­tain­ly should know maybe we can get to the root of this. By the way, I be­lieve that a Test cap­tain is much, much more than just the sum of the play­ers he leads.

Re­sults notwith­stand­ing, the one thing that lead­ers, in sport, pol­i­tics or busi­ness must do is to en­sure that every sub­or­di­nate im­proves in every way dur­ing their tenure. Giv­en the pletho­ra of West In­dies cap­tains in es­pe­cial­ly the last 15 years, few have come up to that! Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards were con­sec­u­tive cap­tains, high­ly suc­cess­ful too, for a pe­ri­od of 17 years, from 1974/5 to 1991! What ex­act­ly is wrong with this pic­ture now?

Most promi­nent am­bas­sador

Sim­ply, the West In­dies crick­et team cap­tain is the re­gion's most promi­nent am­bas­sador. Most peo­ple around the world do not know who the Prime Min­is­ter of St Lu­cia is. In­deed, dis­ap­point­ing­ly, but true, most Caribbean peo­ple do not know that ei­ther. World-wide, many do not even know that there is a coun­try called St Lu­cia, much less to know where it is and who its leader is! Mean­while, I am dou­bly sure that more than one-third of the world's pop­u­la­tion; 2.5 bil­lion or so peo­ple; know that St Lu­cian Dar­ren Sam­my is now West In­dies cap­tain.

Con­verse­ly, some of the Caribbean's pompous, ar­ro­gant po­lit­i­cal lead­ers will nev­er recog­nise how ut­ter­ly in­signif­i­cant they re­al­ly are in the greater run of things world-wide, de­spite their self-largesse, in self-im­posed bub­bles, with those fawn­ing 'yes-men' serfs around. Their non-im­por­tance is re­al­ly so pal­pa­ble, it is un­be­liev­able! With so many re­cent tak­ers, it was as if West In­dies cap­tain­cy was just be­ing giv­en based on ex­pe­ri­ence, with­out any re­al knowl­edge of lead­er­ship. Some might have even aid­ed, in­ad­ver­tent­ly, the very de­struc­tion of our crick­et with their ef­forts.

Can Sam­my re­al­ly make Windies team?

Not­ing dis­patch­es from around the world since Dar­ren Sam­my's se­lec­tion as WI cap­tain, the gen­er­al feel­ing is that this is the first time in any ex­tend­ed mem­o­ry that West In­dies is be­ing led by a play­er who can­not, nat­u­ral­ly, eas­i­ly, make that very team. I can­not re­mem­ber any play­er be­ing made cap­tain in my life­time who was not a wor­thy play­er! We in the Caribbean at least ex­pect that our WI team cap­tain reg­u­lar­ly per­forms well enough to com­mand a place in the team, re­gard­less of play­ers se­lect­ed around him.

West In­dies crick­et is not Eng­lish crick­et. Ex­cept for Michael Brear­ley's suc­cess­ful Eng­lish cap­tain­cy in the 1980's, a one-off sit­u­a­tion just to beat Aus­tralia–sup­pos­ed­ly more with psy­chol­o­gy than his own prac­ti­cal abil­i­ty–'Do as I say; do not wor­ry about what, or how, I do', does not work for West In­dies crick­et. We need re­al sub­stance here! It should al­so be not­ed that the start of the in­dig­nant fall of West In­dies crick­et–Aus­tralia beat­ing us here in 1995–did not hap­pen just be­cause play­ers were leav­ing be­cause of age and longevi­ty; a re­moval of pro­longed ex­cel­lence. That fall co­in­cid­ed with oth­er mean­ing­ful words - greed, self­ish­ness, self-emol­u­ments, stu­pid­i­ty, look­ing out for No. 1!

The mak­ing of a cap­tain

Let us back-tract 35 years. Clive Lloyd (Su­per Cat) was made cap­tain in 1974/75, based on hope and vi­sion, but with just 'av­er­age-to-good' per­son­al con­tri­bu­tions. With cap­tain­cy, Lloyd's bat­ting was so re­li­able, it be­came 'bet­ter-than-good'." High­ly suc­cess­ful, be­cause of the teams that he had, Lloyd demit­ted "Test" of­fice in 1985/6. (Sir) Vi­vian Richards (Smok­ing Joe) fol­lowed. By the time he quit in­ter­na­tion­als in 1991, the ma­ture team that he had in­her­it­ed from Lloyd had beat all com­ers.

Un­cle Smok­ie be­came the on­ly West In­dies cap­tain nev­er to have lost a Test se­ries. He was al­ways awe­some, but nev­er let lead­er­ship af­fect his skills, pur­pose or de­sire! But then, out of the blue, West In­dies crick­et start­ed au­to-can­ni­bal­ism–that spe­cial art of eat­ing one's self. 1991 start­ed a cap­tain­cy avalanche that we still feel to­day. There was great dis­con­tent in many places when the very ex­pe­ri­enced Desmond Haynes was not giv­en per­ma­nent cap­tain­cy, even though he did cap­tain a few tours. In­stead, the less ex­pe­ri­enced Richie Richard­son emerged from Sir Viv's shad­ow to lead the team!

The in­fight­ing in West In­dies be­came so acute that by 1996, Richard­son was a ful­ly spent and blown force, with sev­er­al very se­nior play­ers say­ing, to his face, that 'your cap­tain­cy is over!' The very gen­tile Richie Rich took months to re­cu­per­ate from that! Fur­ther mis­takes con­found­ed. Court­ney Walsh re­placed Richard­son. While al­ways an ex­cel­lent bowler, quite de­ter­mined and a tremen­dous ser­vant to our crick­et, many still won­der what qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be cap­tain had he, ex­cept his longevi­ty in the team, and that the Pres­i­den­cy of West In­dies crick­et then was al­so Ja­maican. Worse was to come.

The Bri­an Lara era

Less than two years lat­er; 1998; Bri­an Lara, more from his coun­try's lob­by­ing be­cause of his ex­cel­lent in­di­vid­ual bat­ting than the play­er him­self, be­came cap­tain. I said then, and will die be­liev­ing that, bril­liant bats­man that he has al­ways been, Lara would have had very much bet­ter ser­vice as cap­tain, had he been made team leader two years lat­er, hav­ing ac­quired the req­ui­site ex­pe­ri­ences by then. He was not yet ready when made cap­tain, but had been 'pushed,' much too ear­ly, in­to that po­si­tion. He start­ed well against Eng­land, but even­tu­al­ly, the ex­per­i­ment back­fired!

That start­ed a re­al com­e­dy of sad, mind­less er­rors. In 2000, Jim­my Adams as­sumed the cap­tain­cy. That made no sense at all, as Lara had the op­por­tu­ni­ty, with some suc­cess, to try to build the team in his im­age. In my opin­ion, Adams was the most de­fen­sive, unimag­i­na­tive cap­tain West In­dies has had in my life­time, a fur­ther nail in our am­bi­tions. Adams' team was shel­lacked in Aus­tralia at 2000-end, so Carl Hoop­er as­sumed the cap­tain­cy. He was quite un­easy, and his con­fi­dence suf­fered bad­ly, es­pe­cial­ly with the con­tin­ued com­par­i­son of his bats­man­ship with Lara's. Thence fol­lowed a most be­wil­der­ing se­quence. Lara re­turned to cap­tain in 2001, to have a sec­ond bite. Then, Hoop­er was made cap­tain again, for Shar­jah, and then, in 2002, two full tours against In­dia.

By 2003, Lara was cap­tain again, for tours by Aus­tralia, and to Zim­bab­we, South Africa and to Eng­land in 2004. It was as if Hoop­er, who even­tu­al­ly self-de­struc­t­ed, and Lara were play­ing mu­si­cal chairs, even though both had al­so been in­jured along the way. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, up­heaval and greed be­came more preva­lent and rel­e­vant than crick­et. Then, prob­a­bly the most re­luc­tant cap­tain ever for West In­dies, Shiv Chan­der­pual, was elect­ed. In 2005, his team lost to South Africa, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, then to Sri Lan­ka. By 2006, Lara was back again, los­ing to In­dia and Pak­istan. In 2007, Ramnaresh Sar­wan be­came cap­tain to try to al­le­vi­ate the con­tin­u­ous pain. He prompt­ly be­came se­ri­ous­ly in­jured, al­low­ing Dar­ren Gan­ga to deputise. By the end of 2007, for South Africa, Chris Gayle was elect­ed cap­tain, to be suc­ceed­ed now by Sam­my. That brings us to now. What hap­pens next, for West In­dies cap­tain­cy, is any­one's guess!