Spineless, Shameful W.I Performance

The Caribbean mourns and hangs its collective head in shame at the poor, spineless, shameful performance of the West Indies cricket team in recent years.

Everybody passes in the self-flagellation ? the players, coaches, managers, territorial boards and of course, the West Indies Cricket Board. The players are on the front line and to them goes the first responsibility for poor performance.

Young men come into the team who seem not to ?feel a how? when they play badly. They make few runs, take less wickets, and drop more catches, but bedeck themselves with gold chains, diamond earrings and designer sunglasses (worn on their caps) and swagger about as though they were the winners of three consecutive World Cups.

They do not practice as professionals should, and are not serious in the nets and making each session a rehearsal for what they intend to do in a match. So in the match they do as they did in the nets. Bowlers do not bother about bowling no balls and do so in matches.

They see nothing wrong about bowling full tosses or half-volleys in the nets. They do so in matches and pay the price.

If you were a selector what would you do with those players?

Maybe, the selectors do nothing. They leave the same jokers, thereby killing, before birth, their desire to improve. They may also be dampening the ardour of the probable challengers.

The players? lack of enthusiasm and desire to be the best is a definite deficiency in the West Indies players of the 21st century and they merely reflect the general character and quality of the youth of today.

That brings into the equation the responsibility of the coaches, the various territorial boards and ultimately, the WICB.

The WICB has sought to dodge its responsibility. After the players? revolt before the first South African tour, the Control was dropped from the WICBC and it is certainly not mere coincidence that the players seem to run the show.

There has been steadily declining quality in teams since the departure of the stalwarts of the Lloyd era. That reached a nadir when Lara and Hooper staged a face-off with the WICB over financial conditions, prior to going to South Africa in 1998. That ended with the WICB first firing Lara and Hooper and then backing down after the efforts of many prominent personalities, among whom was Nelson Mandela.

Since then the players have held the whip hand and the Board has gradually relinquished authority in the effort to be in the good graces of the players and the general public.

The team is generally not as fit as professional athletes should be. There is need to institute a training regime that would help players to retain their fitness throughout the year. The responsibility is the players? to keep themselves fit, but it is the greater responsibility of the WICB to see that the players are physically fit and mentally prepared to withstand, even to delight in the pressure that is part of international cricket.

Earlier generations had the benefit of parents and a society that prepared them to be self-reliant and tough competitors. They had the desire to prove that they were as good as the colonial masters and cricket was the battlefield on which they they won their spurs.

They won their place in the sun by outplaying the best of the English, by defeating the Indian and Pakistani teams and by battling the Australians to the wire before eventually dominating them as well.

They did that by playing with pride and passion, with loyalty to team and by the burning desire to be as good as they could possibly be. What do the current generation desire? What motivates them? Surely it could not merely be money.

If players so often fail and remain in the team which continues to lose, then the selectors are not doing the job for which they are responsible.

Again, the WICB is in the middle of the problem. The selectors are appointed by the WICB officials, who seem to believe that only former Test players have the experience and the knowledge necessary to be effective selectors. Selectors need analytical competence in recognising the ability of players to be able to rise from club excellence to first class and from first class to Test. We may all remember the many players who excelled at Shell Shield and could not bridge the gap to Test standard. Men like Easton McMorris, Peter Lashley spring to mind immediately.

Just as players are dropped when they fail, selectors should be changed if they fail to produce teams who play well and are the best that could represent the region.

* Everard Gordon writes for the Trinidad Guardian, where this column was first published.