Col­in EH Croft

De­spite con­trary sug­ges­tions, team spir­it and team co­he­sion are not the same thing. All teams have strengths and weak­ness­es, but mis­un­der­stand­ing team dy­nam­ics could and have caused po­ten­tial­ly match or se­ries-win­ning teams to lose.

Some might re­call the poignant scene in that great 1959 film Ben Hur, when larg­er-than-life star Charl­ton He­s­ton "spoke" to his white hors­es while prepar­ing them for the still un­be­liev­ably well-filmed, award-win­ning "char­i­ot race-to-death" scene.

One horse, Alde­baran, was so fast that the Prince of Hur had to coax the an­i­mal in­to wait­ing for the oth­ers, while an­oth­er horse, Antares, was praised for stead­fast­ness; slow­er, stronger, more con­sis­tent, the rock; He­s­ton re­al­is­ing that to win, all four hors­es had to op­er­ate as one team.

Of course, He­s­ton's team of whites beat the usu­al­ly-vic­to­ri­ous team of black hors­es an­chored by his once friend, self­ish Ro­man Tri­bune Mes­sala, who was al­so fa­tal­ly in­jured dur­ing that race. But can any­one ex­plain why, every­where, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, any­thing that is sup­pos­ed­ly 'good' is de­pict­ed in white, while 'bad' is al­ways shown in black? Dis­cus­sions an­oth­er time.

Al­so, decades ago, flight-deck crews on larg­er pas­sen­ger and mil­i­tary air­planes con­sist­ed of at least four peo­ple in that 'of­fice'; cap­tain-pi­lot, co-pi­lot, nav­i­ga­tor and flight en­gi­neer; all with on­ly one ob­jec­tive as a team; to get their air­plane safe­ly, ef­fi­cient­ly, to its des­ti­na­tion.

Nowa­days, due to im­proved tech­nol­o­gy and a rel­a­tive­ly-new phe­nom­e­non, Crew Re­source Man­age­ment (CRM), start­ed on­ly re­cent­ly in 1990, just two hu­mans man­age most flight-decks. That lat­ter con­cept be­came re­al­i­ty af­ter many air­planes had ac­ci­den­tal­ly crashed due to cap­tains and flight crews dif­fer­ing in thoughts and deeds, caus­ing con­fu­sion and hun­dreds of deaths too.

So, sup­port­ers dur­ing West In­dies crick­et's hal­cy­on days; from beat­ing Eng­land in Eng­land in 1976; which start­ed WI's run as un­of­fi­cial Test World cham­pi­ons, to WI los­ing that crown to Aus­tralia in Ja­maica in 1995, 20 years of ab­solute, or­gas­mic eu­pho­ria; would have thought that those suc­ces­sive, suc­cess­ful WI teams had both team spir­it and co­he­sion too. Maybe!

For un­in­formed, present­ly delu­sion­al and for­get­ful WI sup­port­ers, WI's Test team lost on­ly one Test se­ries from 1976 to 1995, against on­ly then low­ly-ranked New Zealand in 1979/80. Af­ter be­ing de­mol­ished 5-1 by Aus­tralia 1975/6, WI's team, un­der then cap­tain Clive Lloyd, af­ter­wards cap­tained by (Sir) Vi­vian Richards, shook the crick­et world to its very core, a pe­ri­od for WI crick­et's dom­i­nance that will nev­er re­turn in our life­time.

But many of those teams, in­clud­ing those in which I played, were nev­er ful­ly co­he­sive or con­nect­ed, even if def­i­nite­ly mean-spir­it­ed, de­spite many thoughts to the con­trary.Tales per­me­at­ed on my first over­seas tour, to Aus­tralia 1978/79; Ker­ry Pack­er's World Se­ries Crick­et; when I was ridiculed by my team-mates and called names as I did not fol­low in their promis­cu­ous ways.

My sole pur­pose in that se­ries was sim­ply to be as fit as ever, bowl as well and as fast as pos­si­ble, for I was on­ly try­ing to make a liv­ing, re­mem­ber­ing that I had just, in 1977, start­ed my in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer.But I can boast, to this day, that I was the on­ly play­er on WSC-WI who nev­er be­came in­jured at any time dur­ing that three-month tenure in Aus­tralia 1978/79 or for the full WI tour ear­ly 1979.

Less you for­get, all WI play­ers who had signed for WSC in 1977/78/79 had been of­fi­cial­ly banned from ever rep­re­sent­ing the re­gion again by then WICB, that at­ti­tude his­tor­i­cal­ly, open­ly led by late, hope­ful­ly un­la­ment­ed, hyp­o­crit­i­cal Pe­ter Short, (Sir) Clyde Wal­cott and Jef­frey Stollmey­er.

Most might al­so re­mem­ber that the sin­gu­lar rea­son that we were re­turned to WI's of­fi­cial fold in 1979 was that WI had been de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons from ICC Crick­et World Cup 1975, since no-one had any re­al con­fi­dence that WI's then sec­ond team, led by Alvin Kallichar­ran to In­dia in 1978/79, could have de­fend­ed that first ever WI in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment win again in 1979.

Thus, by quite noisy rep­re­sen­ta­tion by the Caribbean's col­lec­tive pop­u­la­tion's crick­et­ing voice, much more than WICB's, avail­able and fit WSC-WI play­ers were re­called to nor­mal WI du­ty.Sev­er­al sit­u­a­tions dur­ing my Guyana and WI tenures oc­ca­sioned team-mates to be lit­er­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly, at each oth­er's throats, with me even­tu­al­ly not on­ly be­ing ref­er­ee but peace­mak­er too.

The irony of those sit­u­a­tions was that no spec­ta­tor could have known the dif­fer­ence next day on the field, since the guy who near­ly maimed the oth­er al­so caught out some op­po­si­tion's bat­man, on­ly to be warm­ly em­braced by the po­ten­tial vic­tim-bowler from the pre­vi­ous night's ac­tiv­i­ty!

There have been many well-known and ac­knowl­edged thefts of jew­el­ry and equip­ment from me and oth­er play­ers that could on­ly have been com­plet­ed by oth­er team-mates, even if 'court-like' proof could not be ful­ly as­cer­tained, not to men­tion sug­gest­ed run-ins with drugs-tak­ing, not the per­for­mance-en­hanc­ing kind, by sev­er­al play­ers, at the very least bring­ing dis­re­pute to our teams.

So, team spir­it, dy­nam­ics and co­he­sion are not the same. Win­ning is the main cat­a­lyst! En­joy!

Clive Lloyd lifts the tro­phy for the sec­ond time.