Winning the World Cup
For quite some time now, it has been difficult to understand some of the choices the West Indies selectors have been making, but this has become even more pronounced in recent years, and more particularly with the current squad chosen for the one-day series in Pakistan.At the time of writing this article, the West Indies have just lost the second one-day match against Pakistan, after the first was washed out, in a closely fought low scoring encounter.
And the feeling at the end of the game is that many of those who administer cricket in the region, including those in charge of making team selections, appear not to be serious about winning the ninth the World Cup tournament in March-April 2007.
Ever since the decline of West Indies cricket, the occasions have been too numerous when there has been talk by senior officials involved in the administration of the game of rebuilding a team, only for such chatter to quickly lose whatever significance it had at the time of its utterance.
One would have thought that, at the minimum, the West Indies should have been using the DFL tri-nation series in Malaysia and the Champions Trophy in India, in both of which they finished runners-up, as dress rehearsals for cricket’s biggest showcase next year, barring injury or the need to give a senior player a deserved occasional rest.
And the same with the current Pakistan one-day series and with every one-day match that follows from here onwards, which will be a tour of India for four games in mid-January 2007.
While all of these matches are being played away from home on different kinds of pitches from what exists in the West Indies, there could still be some consistency in team selection and batting order, as well as in using every opportunity to mould the team into some semblance of a winning unit before the World Cup.
The manner in which the West Indies have become accustomed to losing games from positions of almost certain victory in recent times, not the least in the DFL series and in the Champions Trophy, is a major cause for concern, and it appears that the team has now become the best exponents of cricket being a game of glorious uncertainties.
At long last, Denesh Ramdin is now back in the scheme of things for the one-day games, and the inclusion of Lendl Simmons gives some hope that there are at least a few forward-thinking officials around.
Understandably, for different reasons, the West Indies are without two of their key players, Ramnaresh Sarwan, current vice-captain and a leading batsman in one-days, and Dwayne Bravo.
But the replacements that have been named, Darren Ganga and Corey Collymore respectively, not only boggle the mind, but give the distinct impression that the West Indies are merely trying to get through these overseas tours, without making winning the main objective, and are merely guessing their way where team selection is concerned.
Collymore and Bravo are perhaps two of the most dissimilar players than one could ever bear to imagine in the West Indies team, and Ganga was nowhere in the thinking of the selectors for the one-day version of the game a few months ago.
If Collymore is being thought of as a main strike bowler for one-days, then he should have been included in the first place. And if Ganga is included, and Shivnarine Chanderpaul is not playing, why thrust Simmons to open the batting, albeit his first game, when the experience of Ganga would be more than useful at the top?
Moreover, the extended inclusion of Marlon Samuels and Dwayne Smith leaves more questions than answers. Prior to the just concluded match, Samuels averaged 6.75 in his previous ten one-day games, and Smith 8.00 in his previous ten.
Certainly, the selectors cannot be thinking that they are being played for their bowling alone, as neither of them is destructive enough in this aspect to win games for the West Indies.
If, as skipper Brian Lara intimated some time ago, that performance will be the main basis for selection -- and certainly when Sarwan was dropped from the test team that stance was highlighted -- then the inclusion of Samuels and Smith must be for another reason known only to those who made the decision.
Why not Darren Sammy, who continues to demonstrate tremendous all-round capabilities, and who was struck out of the one-day team without being given a decent run? And why not Narsingh Deonarine, who proved in the Stanford 20-20 tournament that he is capable of quick scoring and more than just useful bowling?
The cricket World Cup is the third largest single international sporting event, behind World Cup soccer and America’s Super Bowl, and it will be the first time in the 30-year history of the tournament that it will be played in the Caribbean, giving the regional team all the benefits of home advantage.
And with some one million spectators and an estimated 2.2 billion worldwide viewers expected, it would be the perfect platform for the West Indies to begin re-asserting their mark in international cricket.
But the manner in which the West Indies team is being run at the moment does not give much hope that this will happen, and certainly is beginning to stifle the existing heightened optimism that they can actually win the World Cup.