Wisden Impact Index – Colin Croft played just 27 Tests for West Indies, all between 1977 and 1982. He played alongside Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Joel Garner primarily – part of the fearsome foursome that set the foundation for the world domination Clive Lloyd’s West Indian team was to accomplish.
Croft took 125 wickets at an average of 23.30 during this period – the most in his team. Only Garner played more Tests than him in this period (just one more), which also suggests something about Croft’s consistency. Both Garner and Holding, however, had better bowling averages while Roberts was somewhat on the decline, relatively speaking.
Despite this, Croft is remembered largely as the fourth-best bowler in this lot and more for his propensity to bowl the short ball dangerously than for being a match, and series, winner for his team.
One sultry Jamaican evening, I endured a wait of mounting futility to speak to Chris Gayle. The instruction had been to meet at his Triple Century Bar in downtown Kingston, but the interviewee was still sleeping off jet-lag at his bachelor pad, a temple of bling recently fitted out with its own strip club. When he did at last emerge, about four hours late, he ordered a round of rum cocktails for his groupies and explained the hold-up with a laconic shrug. “Jamaica time, man,” he said, gold teeth glinting under the disco ball.
This is the same Chris Gayle touted, at the age of 36, as the saviour-in-waiting of the West Indies’ sclerotic Test team. The same Gayle who, as his colleagues were capitulating by 177 runs to Australia in Melbourne this week, was to be found a few miles across town, swishing a gold bat on his latest cash-grab in the Big Bash League. There was a time when Caribbean cricket could summon heroes in the mould of Sir Garry Sobers, who said: “My whole obligation was to West Indies cricket. I’ve never made a run for me.” Now it clutches desperately for answers from men like Gayle, as transparently self-serving as they come. As a Test force the West Indies are, in the wake of their filleting by the Australians, on the ragged edge of oblivion. Gayle is not, and never has been, the answer.
MIAMI, United States (CMC) — Enigmatic former West Indies opener Kieran Powell looks set to turn his back on cricket, if his foray into the world of baseball is successful.
The 25-year-old is currently in Florida ahead of a trial at the IMG Academy on January 13, as he seeks to land a contract with a Major League Baseball team, media reports have said.
“An opportunity came about after a few discrepancies with the West Indies Cricket Board. I decided to take some time off from cricket and some footage of me playing cricket was seen by the LA Dodgers,” Powell said.
