Windwards Need Overseas 'Pros'
What started out as a promising season at Tanteen Grenada has dissipated into a summer of frustration and embarrassment for the Windward Islands in the current Carib Beer regional cricket tournament.The term from bad to worse is apt here, as the sub-regional team has been blinded by the short sightedness of selectors and choked by their own vengeance.
No floury theorizing can adequately explain how a team can be bowled out in one session for 91, as it did against Barbados in Dominica last week, in a game that lost a day and half through rain on a not-frightening pitch.
No one can explain adequately the latest debacle against Trinidad and Tobago this week. The hosts got almost 500 runs even though one of its most prolific batsmen of the season got a duck – on what was from all reports a very good pitch.
Then only watch with horror as the Windward Islands batting crumbled twice and as they capitulated to a spineless innings defeat inside three days.
If it was any other team other than the Windward Islands , and in any other culture, someone might have asked for a match fixing inquiry. That's how farcical the recent returns have been.
All the blame cannot be heaped on selectors and administrators, because if indeed the whole story's been told, the cupboard is bare, especially when it comes to Windward Islands batting.
While there has been some gain with Liam Sebastien, who has shown improvement, there is nothing else to write home about.
For the Windwards, 2007 has been one step forward, and about four backwards. What selectors and administrators must be blamed for is not maximizing, or for that matter inspiring, the talent available.
The Windwards would not have won the regional tournament, or even make it to the final two even if the selectors did. But at least they stood a chance of not embarrassing themselves as they have done, especially in these last two games.
This is a team that could have ill-afforded to discard Junior Murray, who at 39, is still the best middle order batsman it has "available".
Murray's retention should have become even more urgent once Devon Smith, at the top of the order, had to miss games for the West Indies tour of India, and Darren Sammy pulled up injured.No team will make it very far if it losses its three best batsmen in one fell swoop, let alone the Windwards, where virtually every other option is not genuinely up to first class level.
But at least the Windwards, should have at least go to war, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, with the troops you have. Indeed, we have failed to send our best soldiers to battle. Like George Bush, we have mismanaged the war.
Indeed Murray should have continued to be played as a batsman, even while Lyndon James, the current and younger wicket-keeper is in the team.
Once Sammy was unavailable, Mervyn Mathew, the Dominica who can become the same type of lower order all-rounder, should have easily been selected, rather than languishing among the reserves.
At the start of the season, Windward Island cricket administrators could have made a more serious effort too see if they could have had Rommel Currency and Craig Emmanuel, two of the other semi-useful batsmen available.
The two were not selected because they are studying at the University of the West Indies, and they did not indicate their availability as the other university student Sebastien did. While indeed they did not rule themselves in, they surely also did not rule themselves out. Couldn't anybody actively seek to find out – and to even negotiate and discuss some type of accommodation?
But even if, all those players mentioned were added to the brew, it would not have made the Windward Islands regional beaters. The truth is the cupboard is bare. The likes of Hyron Shallow and Alvin LaFuille are hardly useful club cricketers, let alone first class players.
Heron Campbell and Andrew Fletcher are promising teenage players, who could soon be lost too, because they are rubbing shoulders with mediocrity. (And by the way – the non selection of fast bowler Nelon Pascal, which I originally called a mistake might be a stroke of genius after all, since in retrospect he is better served with whatever he has been doing these past few weeks, even if it's nothing, than being involved in this farce).
Fletcher hasn't made enough progress frankly, and somebody needs to take him back to the drawing board.
The Windward Islands should seriously invoke the WICB rule that allows it to bring in overseas players. It will be both for the good of the team and the few promising younger players around. And importantly, it will address to some extent, the compromising of the quality of the regional first class tournament.
Bringing in players from outside of the four islands is not unprecedented, since one time Richie Richardson played for the Windwards, even after he was passed his sell-by date.
Two overseas "pro" could work wonders here, the same way Middlesex's Wilf Slack, the late Vincentian-born player, and the also late Shane Julien, Grenadian-born who was based in Barbados, did to lift the team to genuine contenders in the mid 1980s.
Getting the pros onboard would help the likes of Campbell and Fletcher, who can watch them from up close, just through their sheer work ethic.
But then again, how do you do import those 'foreign' players (be it from within or outside the region), with any justification when you have already dumped the best middle order batsman available to you?
And, isn't that asking too much for a cricket administration that cannot properly organize a tournament between the four islands, or schedule an adequate pre tournament training camp?
Quite a few things would have had to happen first, before we can turn this joke around.
But you know what's even more frustrating? As we get ready to 'welcome the world', we would continue to boast – and truly so – that we have the best stadia at places like Queens Park and Beausejour, while down the street, the worst administrators are sitting in air conditioned offices.
* EDITOR'S NOTE: This column appears this week in the Grenada Advocate newspaper.