Col­in Croft

It is tru­ly amaz­ing how things go for West In­dies crick­et. If it is not near­ly pure gold, then it re­verts to be­ing pure thrash. On the one hand, the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) and the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) must take great amounts of re­spect, praise and ku­dos for putting on such a mag­nif­i­cent show that was the ICC World T-20 West In­dies 2010. I know most of the ICC and WICB op­er­a­tives per­son­al­ly and I have been very loud and com­mu­nica­tive in my praise to them, sin­gu­lar­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, since it was the best or­gan­ised crick­et event that I have ever been to and I have seen them all, every­where around the world, since 1994. The or­gan­i­sa­tion and friend­li­ness, might it have been in St Kitts, for es­pe­cial­ly the women's com­pe­ti­tion, or Guyana, St Lu­cia or Bar­ba­dos, was su­perb, sur­pass­ing any­thing that has oc­curred in the sport­ing Caribbean pre­vi­ous­ly.

We would not even com­pare it to that sham­bles that was the 2007 ICC (50 overs) World Cup in these parts. This is the prover­bial "chalk and cheese" sit­u­a­tion; no con­test! Both the in­au­gur­al ICC WT-20 2007 event, in South Africa, and the sim­i­lar 2009 event, in the Unit­ed King­dom, were eas­i­ly sur­passed as re­gards or­gan­i­sa­tion, in­for­ma­tion, en­joy­ment, free­dom, plea­sure and even some good crick­et. We hail the WICB here! In­ci­den­tal­ly, that Aus­tralia played Eng­land in the men's fi­nal, and the Aus­tralian women played the New Zealand women in their fi­nal, al­so con­firmed that the cream al­ways ris­es to the top. These four teams were eas­i­ly the best in their com­pe­ti­tions.

Our crick­eters con­tin­ue to em­bar­rass us

On the oth­er hand, the se­nior men's West In­dies crick­et team, our most known rep­re­sen­ta­tives, any­where world­wide, be it crick­et or oth­er­wise, con­tin­ues to em­bar­rass us all, with their com­plete in­ep­ti­tude. I will con­tin­ue to re­it­er­ate that so many of the present play­ers should not be in the team. The prob­lem is that some of those who should be there now are ex­act­ly else­where, in Bangladesh, play­ing for the West In­dies "A" Team. The irony of this is that all have been call­ing for the re-in­tro­duc­tion of the "A" team con­cept, since it is from these guys that we can ex­pect fu­ture re­place­ments to come. Yet, now that it has been re­con­vened, the tim­ings and the sched­ul­ing have caught out the WICB and the se­lec­tors, too. Both chief WICB Se­lec­tor, Clyde Butts, and cap­tain, Chris Gayle, have sug­gest­ed, open­ly, that some of the present West In­dies play­ers are at the end of their in­com­pe­tent teth­er.

Yet, they are caught by the lack of plan­ning for per­son­nel. This sit­u­a­tion al­so high­lights how poor our crick­et foun­da­tion re­al­ly is. We have about 15 play­ers who could be play­ing for the se­nior West In­dies crick­et team. Then we have, maybe, an­oth­er 15 who could be in­clud­ed in the "A" team. Then, there is noth­ing else left, de­spite the zil­lions of coach­es and coach­ing pro­grams, sup­pos­ed­ly be­ing car­ried out every­where around the Caribbean. What this sug­gests is that while we have great num­bers of young crick­eters, most of them are not to the stan­dards re­quired at the top. So, let us re­vert to the ICC WT-20 West In­dies 2010 for a mo­ment. To quote a very good friend, fel­low sports jour­nal­ist Fazeer Mo­hammed, as he sug­gest­ed, suc­cinct­ly; "No one cel­e­brates de­feat and fail­ure like the West In­dies; team, play­ers and peo­ple alike." Like Faz, I could nev­er un­der­stand how the peo­ple could be jump­ing up and ex­alt­ing, ac­tu­al­ly cel­e­brat­ing, when a West In­dies wick­et falls.

That bring me back to an­oth­er com­ment that I made a few years ago: "Most peo­ple who go to the crick­et these days do not go there for the crick­et. They go for every­thing else." It is very ob­vi­ous. When a wick­et falls, they shout and car­ry on, with hands and cups of liq­uid in the air. When a six is hit, they act ex­act­ly sim­i­lar­ly. I am sure that all of them do not know the dif­fer­ence! These same peo­ple, at day's end, would ask: "Hey Kraff bhoy, wha' de score?" The fol­low­ing in­ci­dent com­plet­ed my ed­u­ca­tion, as to the em­pha­sis that some of the men play­ers put on their per­for­mances.

Pol­lard stars on ES­PN

A short in­ter­view, done by ES­PN STAR, of West In­di­an Ke­iron Pol­lard, just be­fore the start of the game; West In­dies v Sri Lan­ka; at the Kens­ing­ton Oval, in the pre­lim­i­nary stages of last week's ICC WT-20 2010, may have said and shown all. The fi­nal ques­tion of the in­ter­view­er was to ask Pol­lard if he and the rest of the West In­dies crick­et team, who were play­ing for a place in the Su­per 8's, would be try­ing to em­u­late, fol­low the ex­am­ple of what the women had been do­ing, since they had been very im­pres­sive. I can­not give Pol­lard the ben­e­fit of the doubt here, since the fo­cus should have been ful­ly on the ICC WT-20. How­ev­er, I sup­pose from his point of view, it could not be ful­ly as­cer­tained if the in­ter­view­er was re­fer­ring to the West In­dies Women's team, which had, by then, qual­i­fied for the se­mi-fi­nals, or per­haps the in­ter­view­er could have been re­fer­ring to the scant­i­ly clad, en­er­getic young ladies cel­e­brat­ing and ca­vort­ing around the sta­di­um.

All of us in the press box who heard the ques­tion knew that the in­ter­view­er was re­fer­ring to the West In­dies Women's team. From his re­ply, Pol­lard ob­vi­ous­ly did not! His re­ply was as in­struc­tive as it was ed­u­ca­tion­al, as it told all where his and per­haps the rest of the team's minds were: "Yeah man, the girls are win­ing down their hips and car­ry­ing on great. They look good." This, mind you, came from a guy who av­er­ages 11.00 in T-20 crick­et.

Some play­ers are be­yond help

Every­one in the com­men­tary box­es cringed with em­bar­rass­ment, as it demon­strat­ed ex­act­ly where the em­pha­sis and mind-sets of our rep­re­sen­ta­tives were. West In­dies crick­et, on the field, needs help bad­ly. Some of the play­ers are be­yond help, as they re­mind me of "Big Moose" in the Archie comics–big, strong and dumb! Oh, to com­plete the ref­er­ence, Sri Lan­ka man­aged to pum­mel the West In­dies for the high­est score of the tour­na­ment, 195-3 in their 20 overs, with an­oth­er ma­jes­tic in­nings from Ma­hela Jayawar­dene, who made 98 not out. Then, they man­aged to de­feat the West In­dies, and to qui­et the hope­ful, but re­al­is­tic near­ly 15,000 West In­dies sup­port­ers at the Kens­ing­ton Oval, by re­strict­ing the West In­dies to 138-8. Al­so, Ke­iron Pol­lard made a ma­jes­tic 9.

Now, let us fast for­ward to the two T-20's against South Africa a few days ago. Af­ter los­ing to an av­er­age South Africa, 2-0, Chris Gayle has now de­scend­ed to sound­ing like Pe­ter Cush­ing in the old Ham­mer hor­ror films–Drac­u­la and Franken­stein etc–on­ly pre­dict­ing the al­ready ob­vi­ous­ly present doom! Gayle, now, sounds like pre­vi­ous cap­tains Carl Hoop­er and Bri­an Lara sound­ed a few years ago. Lost and con­fused at their teams' un­flat­ter­ing ef­forts. When that hap­pens, it is time for the cap­tain to walk the plank. Like them, Gayle does not now seem to be able to in­still any re­al con­fi­dence or in­spi­ra­tion! As in every­thing, it is now time for change!