20 years of 'dumb' cricket

While the sexual harassment/gender aspects of the Chris Gayle controversy are being ventilated, it may be appropriate to consider the purely cricketing aspect of his behaviour. It says more about why we are near the bottom of the pile than we might care to admit.

Gayle has been an international cricketer for almost 20 years, travelling the world, sampling many different cultures. Yet it is clear that he genuinely did not know that his response to that female reporter was inappropriate! In considering the cricketing aspect of this interview, it would be instructive to connect it with an earlier interview in 2009 which readers may think, at first blush, has no connection. I assert that the two interviews are directly connected.

Michael Holding observed after yet another World cup failure last year that West Indies did not play "intelligent" cricket. Holding works in television where views tend to be understated. I have no such reservation. We not only played "dumb" cricket then, but have been doing so for 20 years. That's why we are where we are today. Nothing to do with the WICB governance structure, lack of money, attraction of other sports... and all the usual absurd excuses trotted out after each failed tour. Just plain "dumb" cricket, employing only those parts of the body from the shoulders down.

What about that 2009 interview? Gayle toured Australia that year as captain and opening batsman. Before the second Test he was asked -- by a male reporter this time -- what he thought of the new Australian speed merchant, Doug Bollinger, who Gayle was to face the next day. This time Gayle was speechless. He had no clue who Bollinger was. Of course, the next day, after peppering him with short pitched deliveries, Bollinger dismissed the West Indian captain cheaply. The Aussie ran down the pitch, thumped his chest and proclaimed "now you know my name"! After other dismissals Gayle later admitted that he had become "Bollinger's Bunny".

One can safely extrapolate that since the captain didn't know anything about the new bowler he was facing the next day, neither the coach, manager, vice captain, or anyone else had raised Bollinger's name at any team meeting.

No other international team, in any sport, operates this way. Only the horses at the race track occasionally run with blinkers.

Nor was the Bollinger incident the only memorable "Gayleism" on that tour. England captain Douglas Jardine introduced 'bodyline' tactics back in the 1930s with Harold Larwood bowling at Don Bradman's body to five waiting fieldsmen in the leg trap; Western Australian captain Keith Carmody gave cricket the famous "Carmody Field", with eight fieldsmen and wicketkeeper in a menacing cordon behind the stumps. Gayle also added to cricket's lexicon in that 2009 series. Thanks to modern technology of the stump microphone Gayle could be clearly heard by all the world setting his field while bowling to Marcus North. "Scatter", he shouted as he was about to bowl.

For years I dismissed claims by my Guyanese friends as just plain badminded bar room talk when they asserted that another West Indian captain, this one Guyanese, had also used the "Scatter" fieldplacing method. Now I am not so sure that they were making up a story about another player who should never have been made captain, of any team.

Over the past 20 years this "dumb" cricket on the field has been aided and abetted by poor coaching -- Roger Harper and Gus Logie excepted -- and selectors who continue to use the same discredited "four prong" pace attack from past wars (e.g. insanely picking Shannon Gabriel over Carlos Brathwaite).

Only the latest example of Clive Lloyd's appalling judgment is the recall of left arm Sheldon Cottrell, Jamaica's answer to Sir Donald Bradman. As everyone knows, Bradman's lifetime average is 99.94. Cottrell offers a highly competitive average of 98.00. Small problem: that's Cottrell's bowling average, for his two Test wickets! He will no doubt lead "Lloyd's Lambs" to yet another slaughter.

Errol Townshend is a Jamacan-born retired sports journalist and cricket administrator based in Toronto. He covered his first Test way back in 1960.