“Disappointments, surprises and successes!”

Feb 01, 2015 Sports

Colin E. H. Croft
No-one expected West Indies to beat South Africa, even if some of us hoped for better overall WI displays,

Veersammy Permaul

but that shellacking has been hard to comprehend, even given all that had occurred before and during that last SA tour.
But, as suggested to me fifty years ago by my old queen, all bad things must also come to an end. So it has been with WI’s difficult 2014/15 tour to SA!
Not many believed that all was well within the team, especially with WI squad for ICC CWC 2015 having to be selected and published while also being walloped in SA, but generally, only few players enhanced claims to continuance on our teams.
Losing this recent ODI series 4-1 and Test series 2-0 reminded some of WI’s 1998/99 tour to SA, which started with senior players actually heading in the opposite direction, away from SA, going from Hong Kong’s Sixes to be holed up in London to, lengthily, negotiate fees and contracts.
While practicing with WI in Johannesburg before Test No. 1, the first major game of 1998/99’s tour, I casually asked one senior player on WI’s first full official team to SA, after its emergence from Apartheid, as to how he thought WI would fare for the tour.
I expected that WI could either win or lose the Test series 3-2 or 2-1, but would win the ODI series 4-3 or 5-2, as Courtney Walsh and (Sir) Curtly Ambrose were still bowling up storms of wickets!
“Crofty,” the classic batsman said clearly, openly, nonchalantly, “we will not win a single game!”
He was only slightly wrong. That 1998/99 tour was terrible, WI at similar crossroads to 2015, losing the ODI series 6-1 and the Test series 5-0!
That player knew that, mentally, the team had been severely shot even before starting that tour, so he did not expect many positives. How WI recovers in 2015 could be intriguing too.

Sunil Narine

Luckily for present WI players and selectors, before they could even contemplate as to how to tackle England and Australia in Test series later this year, there is ICC’s biggest tournament, CWC 2015, to focus on, giving all concerned some much needed breathing space after touring SA.
But WI already has a somewhat confusing development for ICC CWC 2015.
Sunil Narine has deselected himself, thus robbing WI of its most potent bowling asset. How the team copes without Narine is anyone’s guess, since, strangely, he has been replaced with Nakita Miller, yet another left-arm orthodox spinner, similar to already selected Suleiman Benn.
Somehow, WI’s selectors seemed to have contradicted themselves twice with Miller’s selection!
Inopportunely, WICB-Nagico Super-50 2015 tournament could not have been completed before WI selected its ICC CWC 2015 squad, but if selected players were to be replaced, for whatever reasons, then the Super-50 tournament ought to have been used to air-mark such replacements.
Narine was easily the best bowler for Super 50; twelve wickets; closely followed by Veerasammy Permaul; eleven; Devendra Bishoo and Dwayne Bravo; nine wickets each. Miller had six.
If indeed another orthodox leg-spinner was to replace Narine, then that should have been Permaul.
Interestingly, two WI selectors, Courtney Browne and Walsh, were at games at Queen’s Park Oval. Did they see the same games that we saw, noting that Permaul, in this his prime time, has “a golden arm”? Whatever the guy bowls nowadays simply gets wickets!
In the franchised four-day competition which started late-2014, continuing later this week, Permaul already has thirty-two wickets for Guyana from only four games. He is bowling brilliantly and his confidence is at its peak, so this is when he should be selected for higher WI honors, not when he starts to fade away.
I would actually have gone for Bishoo. Selecting two front-line orthodox left-arm spinners in an ODI squad makes no sense. Bishoo’s right-arm leg-breaks would have presented vast variations, not to mention his intelligent late-order batting too.
Dismissing everything else that had occurred recently, I may even have gone for Dwayne Bravo way before Miller, if Bravo was fit enough to last CWC 2015’s journey!
Incidentally, both Permaul, 25, and Bishoo, 29, are much younger than Miller, who is 32.
Noting WI’s Chief Selector Clive Lloyd’s public comment; “We really and truly want to pick people on what they have done for our cricket and not for anyone else, with a focus on the future”, after omissions of Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard from WI’s World Cup squad, one has to ask: What else does Veerasammy Permaul have to do to be re-selected for WI teams?
That Permaul, Bishoo and Guyana’s Jaguars were badly outfoxed by Trinidad & Tobago’s Red Force, especially Narine’s six wickets for nine runs in the final, was almost embarrassing.
At least, the two best teams met in that final, a good overview of 2015’s competition. Enjoy!
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