Don Anderson | Windies cricket: Infrastructure a new word for application

As a loyal West Indies cricket fan who stays up day and night to watch our games wherever they are played, I am, like many others, very distressed to find us near or at the bottom rung of the cricket-playing nations in almost all formats of the game.

There is no clear-cut answer to our woes, and I won’t be presumptuous enough to suggest that I have a good handle on it, but I would like to offer my own thoughts in an effort to encourage deeper thinking towards possible solutions.

Test captain Chase suggested after we easily lost a series recently that our problem is that we just don’t have the infrastructure in place to compete at this level. I am not sure what this means. There is no doubt that other nations have surpassed us in terms of the technology available and in use, and there is no question that we play far less cricket in our region and at the national and youth level than most other countries, and these are real shortcomings that cannot be ignored. This means that we do not get to play consistently at a level that will place us on equal terms with Australia or England or India or New Zealand, so when we are pitted against these countries, the players, perhaps, perceive a gulf between themselves and the opponents. This may be the case, but I firmly believe that there is no significant gap between the capabilities of our players and those of other nations except in terms of our preparedness to apply ourselves during the course of our game.

Our bowling unit has been doing fairly well of late in either getting out the top sides or restricting them as can be seen from our recent memorable defeat of Australia on their home soil when Shamar Joseph claimed 7-68 in a match-winning and series-tying performance. Of note is that our bowling unit has been performing admirably since Ravi Rampaul was installed as bowling coach. This may be coincidental, though I doubt it.

MUCH TO BE DESIRED

Our batting, however, has left much to be desired as was evidenced by the embarrassing display of being bowled out for 27 in our recent Test match at Sabina as well as other low scores under good batting conditions before and since. When you analyse the way in which our batsmen continue to get out, it is clear that they do not put a high enough price on their wickets. Invariably, the commentators speak to playing injudicious shots or the wrong shots and gifting their wickets to the opposition. This has less to do with infrastructure than with application. It seems obvious that the batters are not reading the game well enough in addition to not reading the spin bowlers in particular, leading to the notion that we are generally at sea when it comes to good spin bowlers.

This has been evidenced time and time again against good spin bowling, and unfortunately, we have become labelled as such and are specifically targeted by teams that have good spin bowlers. It is still a marvel to me that a team as potentially talented as the West Indies can be bowled out for 27 in any form of cricket. Australia made good runs on the same wicket although our bowlers did restrict them somewhat, but to assimilate that our 10 partnerships averaged less than three runs each is just unimaginable, except that it really happened.

No batsman really attempted, in my view, to apply himself, to play each ball on merit, to defy the bowling, (which was good), to survive a few overs, to grind out minutes, leave alone those balls that were not necessary to play, to frustrate the bowlers, to seek to avoid the ignominy that ensued. We were all out by the time I parked my car and got into the stands a few minutes later. Inconceivable but true.

We have seen similar if not equally demoralising batting displays by the team since then, case in point being all out for 117 last week after Bangladesh posted a commanding score of 296 not losing all their wickets on the same pitch.

UNPREPAREDNESS

This has nothing to do with infrastructure but with the unpreparedness of the batters to apply themselves to the task at hand.

The net result is seen in our present record of losing far more series than we are winning, a statistic that could look a lot better and place us higher on the ladder if only we were able to size up each match better, play to our real potential, apply ourselves to the situation at hand.

The comparison for me is taken from our excellent track and field record, where we are virtually on top of the world save for the US and Kenya despite having only one top- class running track in country and generally less-than-ideal infrastructure. Virtually every high school of note in the USA has a better running track and better facilities than we do. Yet we still beat the rest of the world despite these glaring shortcomings.

Application, application, application would guarantee us greater success at cricket and restore for us some of the pride lost through too easy defeats in our recent past.

Of course, we, perhaps, need a deep study as to why we fail to apply ourselves so consistently when we can do much better.

Don Anderson played Senior Cup cricket for Melbourne Cricket Club and captained the club’s Evelyn Cup team, which included Courtney Walsh as a schoolboy.