Letter to the Sports Editor...What does Guyana’s 4-day triumph mean for West Indies Cricket?

Letter to the Sports Editor…What does Guyana’s 4-day triumph mean for West Indies Cricket?

Apr 12, 2015 Sports

Dear Sports Editor,
The year was 2001. South Africa were about to arrive on their first full tour of the Caribbean since readmission, as the West Indies returned home from being whitewashed by Steve Waugh’s mighty Australian team.
That 2001 also marked the year Carl Hooper returned to cricket after an almost two year hiatus, which resulted in him leading Guyana to then Busta International Shield Final versus Jamaica and later becoming Windies captain.
Hooper’s Guyana XI for that final vs Jamaica read: A Haniff, S Chattergoon, T Dowlin, R Sarwan, S Chanderpaul, C Hooper, M Nagamootoo, N McGarrell, V Nagamootoo, C Stuart and R King.
Considering the career form many of that XI were in at the time, in my estimation that was the strongest Guyana team seen this millennium in any format. Thus when comparing that 2000/01 season Guyana team to the team that won the four-day title for the first time since 1997/98 a few weeks ago – I am left with some puzzling cricket questions.
Can we conclusively say that Guyana who failed to win a single game last season really improved – or has our rivals declined?
Evidence suggests the latter, considering that traditional regional giants Jamaica and Trinidad lost their final round games to regional whipping boys – Leeward Islands. This was quite notable for Jamaica who won six of the seven regional titles from 2007 to 2014.
Curiously, Jamaica has achieved all this with minimal input from their most high-profile players – the likes of Chris Gayle, Marlon Samuels and Jerome Taylor. But why has this island’s dominance failed to noticeably benefit West Indies?
In the last two decades of Caribbean cricket, a decline in the standard of the domestic first-class scene has coincided with the regional team’s weakness in the international arena. Jamaica, in my view, has been best at exploiting the mediocrity of their opponents in the four-day game, rather than being a great team in their own right and unfortunately Guyana season victory followed a similar trend.
It’s hard to seriously say that guys like Permaul, Johnson and Deonarine are international standard. When former chairman of selector Clyde Butts inexplicably dropped Sunil Narine from the test squad a few years ago to give Permaul some tests, he hardly looked threatening at that level. Has domestic batsmen challenged his bowling faults that were exposed in test cricket?
Caribbean batsmen are appalling at playing spin – seven of the top 10 wicket-takers were spinners. Poor Ronsford Beaton or any of the many talented young quicks in the region.
Bowlers like Miller and Permaul thrived on just nagging accuracy. But at the international level, the top batsmen are only troubled by a spinner that turn the ball significantly, and as such, Narine and Shane Shillingford (although he chucked) have proved to be better picks for West Indies.
Deonarine looks like another Stuart Williams/Devon Smith type player, always scores runs domestically – but never looks the part at the highest level.
Leon Johnson’s outside off-stump technical flaws were glaringly exposed by the South Africa pace attack recently – did he have the fast bowlers or the pitches to work on the deficiency since his return, to gauge his improvement?
Only Bishoo, the 2011 ICC Emerging player of the year we can safely have confidence in because realistically he never lost anything. He already proved himself at international level, but was just ridiculously over bowled under the Darren Sammy test captaincy tenure and his then small frame struggled with the workload. Now that he is stronger – I would expect him to be a threat at the highest level again.
Colin Benjamin

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Letter to the Sports Editor…What does Guyana’s 4-day triumph mean for West Indies Cricket?

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