It would be grossly unfair to lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of captain Brian Lara for the West Indies poor showing in the Super Eights segment of the 2007 World Cup.

But there is no doubt that his captaincy leaves more questions than answers. And following the West Indies most recent defeat against South Africa, cricinfo.com, in its report on the match, puts it this way:
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In reply to CaribbeanCricket.com

I have to admit I was baffled by the choice not to bat first. I think everyone and his dog knew (apart from King and Lara) that batting first was the order of the day.

All week I was praying for WI to win the toss, so they could bat first - But I guess my prayers were only half answered!!!

In reply to laynew

How could you be praying for that?

More or less you should have been praying for SA to win and send WI in, even then the SA would have batted when they saw the conditions.

Lara sees moisture on WI wickets when there is none, absolutely none, it is absurd he does not know WI pitches.

WI beat Australia in two ODIs in Grenada a few years ago on pitches that at best were good to make first use of , set a target and put the other team under pressure.


The decisions by these WI top brass to bat second on numerous occasions is most absurd.

Leaving every other game aside, against the SA, the very obvious decision was to bat first, the SA lost two games batting second,, the most significant was vs Bangladesh, that was a few days ago and fresh on SA and everyone else's mind but the WI captain........

In reply to Isah
Define the word Captain, do we have one?

In reply to CaribbeanCricket.com

"The number 7 in Dwayne Smith needs no comparison with averages. And why he continues to bat ahead of Denesh Ramdin is mysterious, despite the fact that Ramdin has been dismissed softly in his last few innings."

Do better research. Ramdin bats before Dw Smith, more often than not.

It is obvious that they plan one thing in the dressing room, then Brian go out on the field and do his own thing. Its not the first it happening. Warm up game come to mind.

In reply to Dreama

Sure enough, worst that a schoolboy captain.

In reply to carl0002

Oh yes, you can say that again, it is easy to understand why the players are ''dumb struck'' when coming out against a decision that was made....

In reply to carl0002

In reply to Gupta

Sounds like Lara has his speech ready at the toss as well 'bowl first because their is some moisture'.

Yep, that's rite Brian. The moisture that helped Sri Lanka score 303/5 & South Africa 356/4.

After reading this article i realised the many numerous mistakes made by di Boss and the coach. I still cannot understand why Taylor, Samuels and Duwayne Smith were left out of the last match. Both Taylor, Samuels and Smith have starred in victories recently and have played no worst than others in the defeats in the supoer8.

Water under the bridge but watch how they will discard these talented guys for the tour of England. Bennet King must go. This man has so much good raw talent to work with, more than Whatmore have with Bangladesh, and he has failed miserably. If this was a soccer team he would have been sent packing the minute we lost yesterday.

Finally it is clear for all to see that BCL is a great batsman - that is what he is and forever will be. A Captain he is not, and will go down as one of the worst WI ever had. Decisions made in this series so far, makes Shiv looked like Lloyd.

In reply to carl0002

Nonsense.

The strategy of chasing has been ingrained into the WI approach since we won the ODI series in India under Hooper. Results prior to the WC confirm that the WI are indeed relatively more successful when chasing. Even when lara sat out an ODI in India, the stand-in skipper Gayle did exactly the same thing. When asked why Gayle mentioned that the team as a whole had discussed it and they all prefered to chase. Regardless of whether or not it is a good strategy, you damn well know that it was decided in the dressing room in advance and was not a spur of the moment thing.

Personally, I have no problem with the decision to field.

Now, taking the PP at the start of the 44th over is an alltogether different matter and one for which I can find no justification. I didn't actually watch the match but I can only assume that Lara plumb forgot that he had one PP remaining.

Excellent article,I am sure that the LBL will disagree vehemently and show you the error of your ways.

Nothing new. Many posters were sayin this for some time now

Seems as if Mr. Singh has been reading the posts of the "cricket knowledgeables" on the CC MB and distilled/condensed it into one article.

Still, it is good to see it on the front page and not scattered amongst many threads.

Im a Lara fan but his tactics yesterday sends a message. I think we should treat these four losses like India and Pakistan would handle their early WC exit. CHANGES NEEDED WITH THE TEAM, SELECTORS AND COACHES.

Yeah change is needed. Sadly though, Selectors, Coach & WICB usually make them too late, and they'll probably win the next two matches, when they don't count.

Bennett King does not care about West Indies cricket ... he is laughing all the way to the bank. Time to kick his ass out the door ... the fans can do a better job at coaching.

Time for WICB to step up to the crease and hire some West Indians to do the job. It's a shame that we are the only team in this tournament that don't have a batting coach, a bowling coach nor a fielding coach.

Time for WICB to hire the likes of Ambrose, Walsh, Sobers and whoever else from the region to work with our team and bring us back to the glory days of West Indies Cricket. These foreign pfuckers don't have a clue about our culture.

it would be interesting to know what, if anything, bennett king has to say about anything.

we well remember that lara was extremely defiant of viv, and viv is known to be a tough, rough, coarse, violent, hignorant, savge, ugly, mudder fugger. lara also had him summarily fired. and viv has "standing" in the west indies.

even the LBL cult will boast that his divine holiness rules over west indies cricket, and does not take orders from mortals. so how does BK figure in west indies cricket!!

the dilema for these LBL mental cases is that, yes, lara IS west indies cricket, the start and end of west indies cricket, the be all and end all of west indies cricket, there is no west inies cricket...........

...........but west indies cricket is a pile of what people accidentally step in, which carries a vile and sickening stench.

In reply to Kurt

You are wrong on this one...since WI chase that 418 and won it was ingrained in them to be the chaser even if it's coke,pepsi or brooklax yuh chasing with :lol: