Coaching and selection
Mon, Aug 21, '17
Not so long ago it was all President Julian Hunte's fault. Now it's all President Dave Cameron's fault. Now it's the fault of too much 'slam-bam-thank-you-madam' T20 cricket. Before, it was the influence of North American sports like basketball. Before that it was the end of exposure to English county cricket. Always it has been "the Board's fault". Yawn.
But truth will out. Whatever the merits of the above explanations for the shocking demise of West Indies cricket over the past 25 years, the plain, unvarnished truth, as revealed by the latest shocking innings and 209 runs defeat by England in three days at Birmingham, is that we now have a gang that "can't bat, can't bowl, can't field, can't captain, can't coach and can't select". Posters, hug that up and weep.
Certainly, as with any organization, the buck stops with the president in the corner office on the top floor, even if the immediate proximate cause of the demise is the surly, incompetent receptionist on the ground floor.
Dave Cameron must now read The Riot Act to all and sundry and fix the problem now. Right now. Otherwise, the rest of this series will see the total meltdown of our cricket as England will show no mercy.
Jarrod Kimber of ESPN's Cricinfo West Indies' legacy left in the hands of schoolboys sums up what I have been saying for a long time:
"Failing to run hard. Poking at wide ones. Not moving one's feet. Hands in pockets as the ball is bowled. Not backing up. Not enough singles. Fielders too deep. Running down the middle of the wicket. No control over line. Playing across the line when it's swinging. No diving to stop boundaries. Balls going through legs. Boundary balls served to order. Lifeless fielding. New ball not taken. Rash shots. Impatient bowling. Terrible techniques. Wasting the new ball."
That is the not even a complete list of the mistakes made in just three days.
Now if an entire math class, asked to add 2 plus 2 keeps answering "5", who is to blame? The students or the teacher? Yes, ultimately it's the principal (Dave Cameron) if he doesn't act, but the immediate proximate cause is the teacher (coaching staff) and the selectors.
Commentator Nasser Hussain, a former England captain, kept noting that the Windies keep making the same mistakes."They're not learning" he observed. Clearly they are not being taught.
The fast bowlers seem to have become convinced that pitching wide of the off stump and hoping for a catch is a wicket-taking formula. It may be. But only after the batsman has scored a double century, as Alistair Cook did. Have they never watched South African Vernon Philander? No great pace but deadly accurate. Like 80 percent of his deliveries are right on the stumps. Play if you can, but if you miss you're gone . Did they not watch Stuart Broad and James Anderson, how they forced batsmen to play long before they were ready to do so? And years after his debut Shannon Gabriel can't be selected because he bowled some 20 plus no balls in a warm-up game. You're telling me a competent coach can't fix this, can't get him to plant his foot behind the line? You're telling me Dave Cameron can allow this nonsene to continue?
The less said of the batting the better. Virtually all our batsmen have chasms between bat and pad that any offbreak or inswinger can find safe passage through. Captain Jason Holder was the worst. Facing offspinner Moeen Ali, he planted his left foot straight down the pitch and tried to hit a ball floating a foot plus outside the offstump. Surprise, surprise, he got an edge.
Nor would any of them bat outside the crease against the pacemen, to reduce bounce and swing. Quite the opposite. Roston Chase, one of few in the team not brain dead, is the tallest of the batsmen. He is the one most physically capable of negating both swing and bounce by batting outside his crease. Yet, there he was, not only not batting outside his crease, but planting his back foot midway between crease and stumps ! No wonder he dragged a defensive block onto his stumps in the first innings and was trapped inside the crease, palpably lbw, in the second innings.
Jermaine Blackwood was the only bright spark but even he has a glaring fault. He is a sucker for the bouncer. Instead of moving across, inside the line of the bouncer, and trying to steer it (while rolling the wrists) between fine and square leg, he stands flatfooted and tries to swat or flick it off his chest like a worrisome fly. More often than not, such a shot is bound to pop up in the air.
But Courtney Browne and his hopeless selectors have made matters worse. Image, England has seven left hand batters and yet the top Windies offspinner, Ashley Nurse, has been left in the Caribbean. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Several of the current squad don't deserve to be there. Shane Dowrich is not a Test class batsman. Certainly Jason Mohammed would have been a batter bet. Dowrich may not even be marginally better than Shai Hope as a wicketkeeper. Why is he there? Miguel Cumming doesn't have the pace to upset even Stafanie Taylor, is inaccurate, doesn't swing it much. His 11 wickets are at an expensive 45 runs.He can't bat to save his life (av.5.00). Why is he there? Ditto Alzarri Joseph. His 15 wickets come at almost 39 runs each. His batting average is a glorious 3.72. Both make Courtney Walsh and Alf Valentine look like accomplished stroke makers. Why is he there?
Two decades ago, here in Toronto, a little backwater of international cricket, I implemented a "One Rabbit" selection policy. Simple: if you're not a bowler (like Walsh or Ambrose) who is going to bowl teams out from time to time, you had better be able to score a few runs down the order or at least defend your stumps while a specialist batsman scores at the other end. If you can't do either, you are not in the team. Now even, traditionalist England, have adopted the "One Rabbit" (James Anderson) policy.
You can blame whoever you want for Windies selectors not following suit. I feel just as justified by blaming it on the Reverend Jim Jones. Back in the 1970s, in the jungles of Guyana, he was able to convince an entire community of believers to drink poisoned Koolaid. Since then an entire West Indian cricket community----players, ex-players, coaches, Board members,selectors,fans, media, posters----have been drinking the poisoned Fast Bowlers Koolaid for 25 years.Determined to replicate the four-prong attack of the glorious Lloyd-Richards Era, selectors have picked a litany of eminently forgettable names. The only gems they uncovered in 25 years were Courtney Walsh, Curtly Ambrose and Ian Bishop. First they selected on the basis that pacemen be over 6ft and run in from 15 metres. Then, like a police department short of suitable recruits, they dropped the height requirement to 5ft-5 (Kemar Roach,Fidel Edwards, Jerome Taylor). But the only place for spinners was the scrap yard ( Nehemiah Perry, Samuel Badree, Nikita Miller). Now they are at it again, imbibing the Fast Bowlers Koolaid, with Gabriel, Joseph and Cumming.
They finally rediscovered Blackwood. This was the same batsman who carried out the drinks in the three recent Tests versus Pakistan, replaced by the forced-ripe Shemron Hetmeyer (plenty shots but no defence) and no-hoper Vishaul Singh. Sigh.
There are problems with finding a partner for Kraigg Braithwaite. Having Keiran Powell poking and prodding to Broad and Anderson for a few overs won't cut it. Better to roll the dice with a hit-or-miss ODI/T20 slugger, going over the top, like Evin Lewis or Johnson Charles. They won't last any longer than Powell but at least they'll get 30-40 runs before the inevitable.
For starters Windies must send an SOS for Daren Bravo, Mohammed and Nurse, CPL commitments notwithstanding. Cameron must act decisively. The incompetence of the coaching staff and the selectors are killing what's left of West Indies cricket.
ERROL TOWNSHEND is a retired lawyer and immigration judge, who has also been a sports journalist, cricket administrator, coach and selector of teams for the past 60 years. He writes from Toronto, Canada.
