By Tony Becca, Senior Sport Editor
THERE IS nothing in sport to lift the spirit of players and their fans like victory, and following Sunday's victory over Sri Lanka, the West Indies players, the team of selectors, manager, coach and physiotherapist are on Cloud Nine and deservedly so.
Following the drawn first Test in the two-match series, the victory, by a commanding and decisive seven wickets in three days, handed the West Indies the series. After losing all three matches in Sri Lanka in 2001, after losing three of their last four home series - to South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, and after starting as underdogs and conquering the swing of left-arm pacer Chaminda Vaas and the biting spin of Muttiah Muralitharan, they deserve a ringing round of applause and should be allowed to bow as many times as they wish.
One swallow does not a summer make, one victory is usually not something worth shouting about. Remembering, however, the Windies problems of recent times, that as exciting as it was, their only victory against Australia came when the contest was over, that the victories in the one-day series against both Australia and Sri Lanka came after the series were decided, that they were at number eighth in the Test rankings and Sri Lanka number four, and that they restricted Sri Lanka to 354 in the first Test, chipped to 477 for nine declared, and then, after trailing on first innings in the second, recovered to win easily, it is something worth cheering.
Lara, batted brilliantly in both Test matches, Wavell Hinds in the first, Ramnaresh Sarwan in the second, and they, obviously, were important to the success of the team.
The players who really deserve to be serenaded, however, are three of the four fast bowlers - the 25-year-old Corey Collymore who, playing in only his second and third Test matches fours years after the first, pocketed five wickets, two and seven; the 19-year-old Jerome Taylor who, playing in his first two Test matches, picked up two wickets; and the 21-year-old Fidel Edwards who, playing in his first Test and only his second first-class match, preened himself with five wickets in the first innings.
THEY BOWLED WELL
As far as the future of West Indies is concerned, what is really important is not only that they picked up wickets and bowled the West Indies to victory at Sabina Park. It is that they bowled well.
Edwards, who was clocked at 92 miles per hour - and Taylor bowled fast and aggressively. All three got the ball to swing through the air and to cut, in and out, off the pitch.
None of them selected themselves, however, and in serenading them, the fans should also serenade captain Lara and the selectors, chairman Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge and Joey Carew, for their insight and their courage.
Who would have thought, at the beginning of the series, that after being tagged a one-day bowler for almost four years following his back injury, Collymore would have been in the Test team, and that Taylor and Edwards would have been bowling for the West Indies?
The real surprise, however, was Edwards who played one first-class match last year and picked up only one wicket, and with so many against his selection because he was selected after bowling in the nets, after begging for him, after convincing the other selectors to select him out of the blue, Lara must be a happy and proud man.
As Lara said on Sunday, however, it was a gamble, and luckily for the West Indies, it paid off.
"We took a gamble," said Lara, "but in the search for some good young fast bowlers, we had to."
The next big one is South Africa at the end of the year, and although Lara has said that the West Indies can take them, it won't be easy - not in South Africa.
Recently, however, the West Indies batting has been coming on, against Vaas and Muralitharan, Hinds in St. Lucia and Sarwan in Jamaica demonstrated that it can take on the best, and with a little more discipline, with Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul to lead the way, it could be ready for Shaun Pollock and company.
The problem, for some time now, has been the bowling, and the question is this: will it be ready?
Although only time will tell, fast bowlers Collymore, Taylor and Edwards at Sabina Park were encouraging, apart from offspinner Omari Banks, Jermaine Lawson, Daren Powell and Tino Best are still around; and South Africa's pitches are kind to men of speed and particularly so to those who are good enough to swing the ball or move it off the seam.
