Mayers’ innings should serve as timely reminder for WINDIES that cricket should be result oriented

Tue, Feb 9, '21

by KRISSANIA YOUNG

On Sunday morning, when many disheartened Caribbean fans would have just been getting out of bed, the West Indies were taking an unassailable one-nil lead in their two-match Test series against Bangladesh in Chattogram. It was first the “belief”, according to the WINDIES camp, then the determination, and not least, the fight of the team that saw the Caribbean side completing the highest successful run-chase in Asia and the second-highest in WINDIES’ history. Therefore, one would think that the match-winning partnership put on by two debutants has, at the very least, initiated the process of elimination in regards to the reluctance with which the West Indies operates when tasked with—simply put—dropping underperformers.

It is important to pick players when they are in-form, something Ian Bishop said on commentary when the Men in Maroon were on the home stretch to victory. Jermaine Blackwood, who in 2020, forced his way back into the West Indies Test team after a two-and-a-half-year absence, has been the team’s leading run-scorer since his return. Similarly, game-changers, Kyle Mayers and Nkrumah Bonner, were first and third runners-up on the run-scoring charts, to leader Blackwood, in the 2019/20 Regional 4-Day competition. “It is important to pick players when they are in-form.”

Now, prior to this tour of Bangladesh, there had been tumultuous and incessant cries for several mainstays in the WINDIES batting-order to be sent back to first-class cricket. And if precedent is anything—which it is indeed the thing—to go by, then there is little doubt that the out-of-sorts Roston Chase and Darren Bravo (among several others) would not have made the trip, if available. Subsequently, the chances of the likes of Bonner and Mayers being presented with Test caps no.323 and no.324, respectively, for the West Indies on Tuesday night, would have been minuscule.

Therefore, all things being equal, the West Indies would have entered Day 5 of this Test with batsmen burdened down with thoughts of “If I fail here…”. Instead, and as fate would have it, despite the nerves and butterflies, the Caribbean side had two batsmen green with confidence from the runs accumulated in the most recent 4-Day competition. As well as youthful exuberance, not yet tainted by the taste of Test defeat or weighed down by the mentality of a losing team.

The quality of our first-class system is reflected in our position on the ICC Rankings, and so no one is arguing that it is suddenly up to scratch as a result of Mayers’ innings. Still, if there is a single takeaway from the key personnel involved in this historic win, it must be that the West Indies’ ‘understood’ policy of delaying the ‘leaving-out’ of experienced players – or the tendency to include an injured “experienced” player in a squad, as opposed to giving the opportunity to a fully-fit, “less-experienced” one – should be coming to a long-overdue close.

And maybe it is worth the time to reflect on our culture and subsequent mentality: where accountability, in questioning performances in results-based industries are subconsciously seen as offensive or personal attacks. And if under-performing players are readily left out more often, then it will be seen as what it is; in that, it is a justifiable demand of improvement, then the assumed ‘disrespect’ will fall further and further below the bottom line.

Of course, the selectors will not want to make wholesale changes, leaving out four or five players all at once, but this is where the onus will fall on them to strike a balance. After all, we certainly cannot continue to “stick to the evil we know” when what we know does not produce the desired results