Windies Plight is Travesty of Cricket

In the past fortnight I have often found myself rooting for the West Indies. I can?t help myself. I fear the demise of a great cricketing tradition ? perhaps the most exciting, if not the best ? and that?s a terrible thought. The ICC must move in with alacrity to arrest this rot. West Indies cricket needs succour.

It needs finance, infrastructure, attention and priority. The second Test is history and seeing Carl Hooper's team struggle to prove their prowess in the first couple of Tests has not been a happy sight.

The batsmen seem bewildered and clueless by turn and spin, the fielding has been so pathetic that an old-timer at the Wankhede reckoned that the notoriously butter-fingered Indian teams of the 1950s would have been better.

The fast bowlers have stuck to their task manfully, but that in itself tells the sad story of decline for in the past, the big pacemen from the Caribbean were terrors, even on slow, benign wickets. So huge has been the contribution of West Indies to the game that their current plight seems a travesty of cricket.

There was more than just a touch of irony last week when Viv Richards and Mike Holding ? two of the most gifted cricketers in the history of the game ? were made honorary life members of the Cricket Club of India only a few hours after the West Indies had been thrashed in a little over three days in the first Test. It seems just like yesterday that these two were in the vanguard of what is now readily recognised as the greatest side that ever stepped on a cricket field.

I asked myself whether the lineage of outstanding players from the wonderful Islands in the Caribbean has burnt itself out with that Lloyd-Richards-Holding-Greenidge-Marshall generation, and the answer, sadly, seems to be ?yes, almost?. Hooper, a gifted batsman who has not done enough justice to his talent, began his career with Richards, as indeed did Brian Lara, whom the West Indies are missing sorely on this tour. But Hooper is 36, and Lara?s future is unsure.

Beyond them, the cupboard looks bare, though the workmanlike Chanderpaul, stylish Sarwan and aggressive Dillon have now and then shown the aptitude to become class players. There was a time when the West Indies was flush with cricketers of spontaneity, brilliance and genius.

In his 1966 essay, The Lesson of Garfield Sobers, J B Priestley writes: "I seem to have spent a lot of time, this summer, sitting in front of the TV watching Garfield Sobers. Always I have stared at him out of a mixture of apprehension and admiration. He frightened me and enchanted me by turns. Batting, bowling, fielding, captaining his side, he seemed to be pronouncing, often with a grin, the doom of the England Xl.

More than once ? in the bitter hours facing defeat ? I wished he would sprain a wrist or turn an ankle. But even so admiration came seeping through these mud walls of partisanship. And it was not only his feats with bat and ball that compelled my applause; it was his style and manner, the way he carried himself, the way he moved." Of course Sobers was peerless, but West Indies cricket thrived before, with and after him. Constantine, Headley, the Ws, Ramadhin, Valentine, Kanhai, Hall, Griffith, Gibbs, the team of the 80s under Lloyd, Ambrose, Lara... The ICC is on a massive globalisation project. It would be a tragedy of cricket if this magnificent lineage is allowed to dry up.

* Republished from the Times News Network of India.