Think to 20
by VANEISA BAKSHCriticisms have come hard and fast for the West Indies cricket team after their early departure from the over-hyped ICC Twenty20 tournament. The team got it good from Bangladesh and gave it away like a sweetie to South Africa in the opening match. In both instances, sloppiness was a key factor to the outcomes.
Watching Chris Gayle's astonishingly powerful century that gifted the tournament with an early and super spectacle, it came to me that this was going to be the highlight, at least for West Indian fans, of the entire show. So I stopped what I was doing and surrendered to simply enjoying it for what it was – no expectations – a lovely, exciting innings, that was all.
It was made easier to appreciate without carrying the baggage of hoping that everyone would follow suit, or that we would see a difference in the team's performance level.
There had been the usual confident blather about how the team was ready, fit and able, and some even reckoned that this team was particularly suited for the demands of Twenty20 cricket. In the end, what we heard was the loud clatter of wickets tumbling as soon as Gayle got tired, and that was the sign of what would come when the side took to the field.
When people say the team is well suited for this short game, they base that on characterising West Indian players as big hitters of the ball, aggressive and powerful and who can score rapidly. Bowling and fielding are equally, or perhaps more important in this version. The bowling is always under attack. It has to be, and if your bowlers cannot take wickets, at least they should be able to control where they are placing the ball to keep extras at a minimum.
The game is short and brutish and requires a sustained intensity from start to finish. It doesn't encourage soporific lulls the way Tests do, so it means players have to be at high alert from end to end. The shoddy fielding was a dead giveaway that the boys were drifting off and not keeping their eyes on the ball.
Given the propensity to describe this generation as one with short attention spans, they might at least keep focused for 20 overs; it seems that even 20 might be too long. In any case, what we saw was the same style, same approach and same outcome to the game that we have seen for a long time. Captains and members may change, but the ethos is the same. That is the malady in West Indian cricket.
Recalibration must be focused on reshaping that culture. It is typical too of the culture to lambaste them individually. They get written off with all the cussedness we can muster. Those who try to look dispassionately at the circumstances to assess what are the characteristics we need at this time, get in the line of sniper fire with accusations of insularity. The game does not need to be so contentiously critiqued, it requires analysis.
As for the Twenty20 form, which has itself become the centre of much dispute over its cricket credentials, an important point is that it is not going to go away. Rather, it seems to be building furious momentum.
The practical step, therefore, would be to examine it more closely and to see what it will require of cricketers, and planners, and better yet, to see how training and preparation shapes cricket players for all versions of the game.
More than anything else, this means having the mental sturdiness and flexibility to adapt to the different forms. This has been a serious challenge for cricket for some time, because the underlying weakness now is the apparent weakness in thinking about the game. And it is not just at the player level, indeed, it is most apparent at all other levels.