Former England captain Mike Arthurton, who has a real connection to the Caribbean (his wife is Guyanese), weighs in on the West Indies cricket decline with a very comprehensive analysis:

The signs of decline are everywhere and they are alarming. On the field, the West Indies, a team who went 15 years without losing a Test series before 1995, have not won a single Test match for over two years. The current touring team is the first for generations that does not possess a world-class performer. Observers can relate to a paucity of world-class performers; after all it is no more than blind luck and chance that England can boast one of their own in Kevin Pietersen, but the absence of basic cricketing skills is harder to understand.

For a team blessed with natural athletes, this must be the worst fielding outfit to visit these shores for an age. Slip fielders standing in each other’s pockets (although at Headingley it might have been an attempt to keep warm); ground fielding that has been shoddy in the extreme, and catching in the deep of barely club standard. This lack of basic skill suggests a deeply flawed system; and since many of these players have been around the team for some years now, it also reflects on the slide into amateurism that has accelerated over the past few years. This is a team who have to learn again the meaning of such terms as ‘work ethic’ and ‘professionalism’.

If you don’t believe me, then you should read the remarkable report of the physiotherapist, Stephen Partridge, following the 2006 home series (it was released on a website called CaribbeanCricket.com). In it he outlines how the players held a meeting in St Lucia during which they decided that the training regime was too intense and forced its cancellation. Of Dwayne Bravo, the brightest of the young players around whom you’d think a team might develop, Partridge said this: his ”approach to bowling training is minimalist”; that he has ”largely moved away from adhering to his personalised physical program”; that ”his diet is of major concern, consisting of sugar and little else”, and that any gains in physical conditioning would be ”gradual and directly linked to the support we gain from his fellow countryman and patron [Lara]”.

Posted in Brian Lara, Captaincy, WICB Idiocy |