Tony Becca
ONCE UPON a time, the West Indies cricket team was the best in the world.
Today, however, it is numbered among the worse, it is ranked
just above Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, and despite the encouraging words from coach Bennett King, it has been in that position for such a long time that fans are wondering if it will ever again move up the ladder.
According to the Australian, the players are talented, they have been working hard, and it will be only a matter of time before the team is back to where it was in the 1950s and 1960s or near to where it was in the late 1970s through to the early 1990s.
THE TEAM
Based on what has been happening, however, that seems nothing but wishful thinking. In fact, it may be a long, long time before the West Indies team will be anywhere as good as it once was as it was in the days of Frank Worrell, Everton Weeks, Clyde Walcott, Sonny Ramadhin and Alfred Valentine, Conrad Hunte, Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai. Basil Butcher, Seymour Nurse, Gerry Alexander, Jackie Hendriks, Wes Hall, Charlie Griffith and Lance Gibbs, Roy Fredericks, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards, Lawrence Rowe, Alvin Kallicharran, Clive Lloyd, Larry Gomes, Richie Richardson, Deryck Murray, Jeffrey Dujon, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Colin Croft, Malcom Marshall, Courtney Walsh and Curtley Ambrose.
In those days, the West Indies possessed some great batsmen and some great bowlers. Today, however, the team boasts one great batsman in Brian Lara and no great bowler, not even one.
What is really embarrassing, however, is the way the batsmen get out sometimes or most times and the way the bowlers bowl sometimes or most times. It is so bad, in fact, that sometimes, many times, one wonders how some of them ever got into the West Indies team.
The answer to that, however, is simple. It is that they are the best in the West Indies.
As one who does not believe that one generation is more talented than another, the question continues to be what has gone wrong with West Indies cricket?
It cannot be that the batsmen simply cannot bat, or that the bowlers simply cannot bowl, and although the West Indies Board would have us believe so, it cannot be that West Indians cannot coach young players how to bat and how to bowl.
LACK OF PROPER GROOMING
It has got to be more than that. It has got to be the lack of proper grooming, the kind of grooming that teaches one how to bat, how to build an innings, the kind of grooming that teaches one how to bowl, how to dismiss a batsman, and the kind of grooming that teaches pride in one's performance.
That kind of grooming, however, cannot take place at the Test level.
Once again, that kind of grooming should and must take place at the club level, and until more emphasis, at least some emphasis is placed at that level, until the clubs can afford to employ coaches and good coaches at that, until they can provide proper facilities for practise, until the West Indies players are forced to play in the club competitions when they are at home, the West Indies team will continue to be selected from players who are not ready - not even, some of them, for first-class cricket.
What West Indies cricket need in order to put out a strong team are two things. It needs a strong club system that will properly groom the players and it needs a longer, stronger and professional first-class competition that will toughen them up mentally and by doing so, prepare them for competing in the Test arena.
