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Test cricket ‘might’ evolved for the better but notfor Windies
By Sean Devers
It would be an insult to compare the batsmen in this team to those in the present side. (Getty images)
Kaieteur News – Someone recently said that the great players of the past would not have been very successful in this area since ‘Test cricket has evolved and it’s better now.
It would be hard to imagine that Roberts, Holding, Garner, Croft and Marshal (arguable the best of them all) would have struggled bowling Kholi, Williamson, Root, Smith, Sharma or Babar Azam.
Or that Richards, Greenidge, Haynes, Gomes, Lloyd and Richardson would find it hard facing Hazlewood, Wager, Anderson, Rabada, Southee, Cummins, Bond and Bumrah.
That might be so with teams like India, England, Australia and New Zealand but I highly doubt it.
Look at the West Indies cricket now.
When I played regional Youth Cricket the pitches in Jamaica and Barbados were fast and had a lot of bounce, the one in Trinidad was spin-friendly, while Bourda was a batting paradise. Now the pitches have gotten slower with many balls keeping low.
I grew up watching Shell Shield cricket at Bourda which had capacity crowds.
Now our Regional first-class cricket is arguably the lowest standard among the Test-playing Nations. Our batsmen can’t bat and our spinners dominate in Regional cricket but struggle to replicate that success at the international level.
Our batsmen don’t average above 40 in Regional cricket and we expect them to average 40 at international cricket.
Some say that our three best batsmen apart from Skipper Kraigg Braithwaite (Darren Bravo, Shimron Hetymer and Nicholas Pooran) should have been a part of the Test line.
I agree to some extent that Hetymer could be used as opener, while Bravo could have filled a middle order position while Pooran has never played a Test match and gives the impression that he does not want to play Red Ball cricket.
Both Bravo (36.47) and Hetymer (27.93) have not reached an Average of 40 at First-Class level so it’s unlikely they would Average 45-plus at Test level.
We blame coaches for the repeated failures of batsmen who reach the highest level with lots of basic flaws which should have been addressed at the club level.
These are our best crop of batsmen and if we expect them to consistently get hundreds at the international level then we are in denial.
Our cricket standard in the West Indies has gotten worse. Our fast bowlers are pressured to win us matches. And it’s not because of a lack of talent but a cultural shift of a generation that strives for instant gratification instead of working hard and long to get great results.
How many schools have Inter-House cricket? How many schools have PE teachers, how many clubs have three teams that can play first, second and third Division cricket on the same weekend?
How many clubs have a U-19 and a U-15 that could play on the same weekend?
These are things that happened in the past in Guyana. And we keep fooling ourselves that the standard of cricket in the West Indies has ‘evolved’ for the better.
If nothing is done to fix the problems at the bottom it’s unlikely we will get back to the top when we dominated Test cricket for 15 years without losing a single series.
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