Col­in EH Croft

At the time of writ­ing this ar­ti­cle 48 hours ago, 11 of the sched­uled 14 na­tion­al squads for ICC Crick­et World Cup 2015 had been de­clared. West In­dies' squad was not among them!

Yet, some­how, in­di­vid­u­als al­ready seem to know that at least two of WI's ODI stal­warts, Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard, both of T&T, had been omit­ted from WI's squad for that com­pe­ti­tion.

It is nigh im­pos­si­ble to hide any­thing or any­one any­more, but how could that have hap­pened?

Com­mon sense sug­gests that ei­ther e-mailed se­lec­tors' dis­cus­sions had been in­ter­cept­ed; "hacked"–to use the tech­no­log­i­cal term, or al­leged omit­ted play­ers had been no­ti­fied, then di­vulged said in­for­ma­tion to friends and agents, or that WI's se­lec­tors had un­know­ing­ly pub­lished their plans for WI's CWC squad.

That 'twit­tered' ob­ser­va­tion from for­mer West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa) pres­i­dent Din­i­nath Ram­nar­ine, who prides him­self on in­tegri­ty, a for­mer WI leg-spin­ner whose ca­reer end­ed af­ter not be­ing se­lect­ed to tour South Africa (SA) in 2003, has left WI crick­et in yet an­oth­er strange sta­te­of dizzi­ness.

What is wrong with this pic­ture? Will the snip­ing in West In­dies crick­et nev­er end?

A new year has start­ed. In­trigue in WI crick­et con­tin­ues. Yet, WI should be rel­a­tive­ly hap­py, per the present SA tour, with prepa­ra­tions for its over­all crick­et for 2015.

Al­ready re­cu­per­at­ing from its 2-0 loss in the Test se­ries, WI, via Chris Gayle, just beat SA in Twen­ty20 No 1. Ex­pect sim­i­lar re­sults in the sec­ond and third too, since T20's is WI's most pro­duc­tive crick­et­ing for­mat.

Gayle, who missed the Test se­ries due to in­jury, has start­ed the short­er se­ries well with that dy­nam­ic, mus­cu­lar 77, an in­nings that in­clud­ed the fastest WI T20 fifty, five four's, eight six­es, from on­ly 31 de­liv­er­ies faced. Yet WI strug­gled some­what to get SA's 165-4, end­ing at 168-6 in 19.2 overs.

WI and the en­tire crick­et world are now hop­ing, hold­ing their col­lec­tive breaths, keep­ing fin­gers and toes crossed, that Gayle not on­ly sur­vives five ODI's in SA too, but will be fit enough to al­so play, fire and con­tribute very well for WI in the World Cup, which will run for six weeks, con­tain­ing 49 games!

So, that just com­plet­ed Test se­ries ver­sus SA was not as bad on WI as many had pre­dict­ed. SA did win, but a few WI play­ers did them­selves and their fu­tures in rep­re­sen­ta­tive teams some pos­i­tives too.

Bowl­ing was WI's biggest li­a­bil­i­ty in that Test se­ries against SA, as WI's bowlers did not man­age to dis­miss SA twice in any of the three Test match­es, while SA had mas­sive scores of 552-5d, 417-8d, 421 and 124-2.

Jerome Tay­lor, se­nior-most fast bowler, and old­est, aged 30, was es­pe­cial­ly dis­ap­point­ing. He looked ter­ri­bly jad­ed, with no pace or ag­gres­sion, even af­ter a sup­posed long rest and re­cu­per­a­tion from in­jury.

Tay­lor de­liv­ered 83.1 overs in three Tests, on­ly four bowl­ing in­nings, del­ug­ing 323 runs, econ­o­my rate 3.9, way too high for Test crick­et, while get­ting on­ly three wick­ets, a strike rate of an as­tro­nom­i­cal one wick­et every 27 plus overs, av­er­ag­ing 107.33 runs per wick­et. That is se­ri­ous­ly poor form and re­turns!

Sim­i­lar­ly pu­trid was Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul's Test se­ries. Nine­ty-one (91) runs, five in­nings, one in­nings alone 50 not out; in­nings No 2, Test No 3; av­er­age 18.20, was as un­der­whelm­ing as any­one has ever seen Chan­der­paul per­form. Nev­er did he seem set­tled against the pace and oc­ca­sion­al spin of SA's bowlers.

WI's bat­ting, over­all, was not that great ei­ther. No in­nings got to 350, in five tries, the high­est, on­ly once over 300, be­ing 329. But Mar­lon Samuels, Kraigg Brath­waite and Leon John­son cer­tain­ly stood out!

Ex­treme­ly pos­i­tive was Samuels' team-top­ping ag­gre­gate and av­er­age, 268 runs, five in­nings, one cen­tu­ry, one half-cen­tu­ry; av­er­age 53.60. His ma­tu­ri­ty, shoul­der­ing his team's bat­ting re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, shone through. He seemed to be con­tin­u­ing from that abort­ed se­ries in In­dia last year.

Brath­waite's ef­forts were heart­en­ing if not as ac­com­plished as ex­pect­ed. One hun­dred and eighty-three (183) runs, one cen­tu­ry, five in­nings, av­er­age 36.60, all give hope for bet­ter when he plays his next Test se­ries ver­sus Eng­land. With SA's pitch­es not as quick or boun­cy as ex­pect­ed, Brath­waite should prob­a­bly have been more pro­duc­tive.

John­son, on his first tour as a se­nior WI play­er, was the biggest pos­i­tive of WI's Test ef­fort against SA. He def­i­nite­ly looked the part, un­per­turbed by SA's bowlers' rep­u­ta­tions, con­fi­dent in his own abil­i­ties.

Five in­nings, 168 runs, on­ly one half cen­tu­ry, av­er­age 33.60, all sug­gest con­sis­ten­cy with­out be­ing spec­tac­u­lar, but John­son al­so suf­fered from gen­er­al WI's bats­men's malaise; 30's, 40's and 50's seem to be enough. In Test crick­et, hard­ly does any­one no­tice that a bats­man had made a half cen­tu­ry.

De­nesh Ramdin's cap­tain­cy was nei­ther good nor bad, as his bats­men and es­pe­cial­ly his bowlers let him down bad­ly. Re­gard­less of how in­no­v­a­tive he might have thought of be­ing, he did not have the team to even ex­pand SA. Hope­ful­ly, ver­sus Eng­land and Aus­tralia lat­er this year, Ramdin could have a bet­ter squad.

Now, WI are more in their el­e­ment in SA; T20's and ODI's. Look out for more fire­works too! En­joy!