West Indies may be on the next flight home

Oct 18, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – West Indies loss to Scotland in yesterday’s World T 20 Qualifiers was not stunning as the team’s loss to Kenya in 1996. But it certainly may be more fatal.

West Indies may not go through to the World T 20 Finals, a development of seismic proportions considering that they have won the tournament twice. Unless they win their next two matches and Lady Luck shines on this, they may be on the next flight out rather than contesting the finals, the first time they would have missed out.

In the 1996 upset by Kenya, the West Indies limited the Opposition to 166 runs off 49.3 overs. Curtly Ambrose took 2 for 21, Courtney Walsh took 3 for 46 and Roger Harper a miserly 3 for 15 off his ten overs.

Such a small total should have been a cakewalk for batting order boasting the likes of Brian Lara, Richie Richardson, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Keith Arthurton and Jimmy Adams. West Indies however meekly succumbed with Chanderpaul top scoring with 19 off of 48 balls. It was one of the biggest upsets in cricket history but it also signaled that the West Indies performance could be unpredictable.

Yesterday’s loss to Scotland was humiliating. But the result should not have surprised anyone considering how West Indies have performed in recent time.

But there are other reasons why the West Indies loss should not shock the cricketing world. Scotland is no pushover team. They have been performing decently in recent years. While, for example, they were beaten 2-0 by New Zealand in a T 20 tournament this year, they performed creditably. They should therefore acquit themselves handily in this year’s T 20 World Cup Qualifiers and may even be spoilers in so far as the West Indies are concerned.

The fact which the West Indies public and its Cricket Board are not accepting is that the rest of the world’s teams are improving. Afghanistan is quite capable of beating the West Indies and so too are teams in the Qualifiers-Scotland, Namibia and even UAE are improving at a much faster rate than the West Indies Team.

Unless the West Indies begins to understand that it is not so much as the team is underperforming as the fact that the competition, at all levels, is getting better, only then will the regional authorities begin to take steps to improve the standard of regional cricket by investing in proper training facilities.

The present training facilities across the Caribbean leaves much to be desired. And this is one of the reasons why regional cricket is in the doldrums.

Guyanese fans enthusiastically supported the Amazon Warriors. But will they do the same for the Harpy Eagles, a full-fledged local team? The answer is no. The CPL is in a different league from the Regional Super 50 which is due to start soon. There will be no large cheering crowds at any of the matches.

Yet, the public is bashing the West Indies Senior Team for its performance. They will support the CPL enthusiastically, but will not do the same for the Regional Super 50 tournament. But they still want the West Indies to do well.

The Guyana Selectors face a dilemma. They are likely to go back with some of old stalwarts who are long past their best. Beginning last year, they should have begun a process of breeding new talent. But because of the long layoff caused by the pandemic, they went with most of the same old faces.

This year, the Guyanese selectors should not be thinking about winning the tournament. They should be looking at building a team with the future in mind. This will entail bidding goodbye to some of the old stalwarts who simply have no prospects of ever making the West Indies Team.

On the other hand, there is a wealth of young talent, including players from the Region Under-19 Tournament who should be groomed with the future in mind. But like everything else, politics is likely to have an influence and it is therefore likely that the team will be a mixture of stalwarts, long past their best, and some of the youngsters who performed well in the recent Inter- County Tournament.

Like the West Indies, this is the dilemma facing the West Indies Team. We keep hearing about rebuilding but rebuilding what and on what- the same old tried and tested bunch?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not this newspaper)

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West Indies may be on the next flight home

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