Bishop: 'West Indies' decline pre-dates this group of players'

Sun, Jul 2, '23

After West Indies failed to qualify for the 2023 ODI World Cup following their loss to Scotland in the Super Six stage of the ongoing World Cup Qualifiers in Zimbabwe, ESPNcricinfo spoke to Ian Bishop about what the loss means to fans back home, how to manage West Indies' available talent pool, and the changes he would like to see in Caribbean cricket going forward.

As someone who grew up watching an era of West Indies cricket that you did, then going on to play for them with pride, and having since followed them in recent years, what are your emotions on the team not making it to a World Cup?

It is a difficult day, and difficult to sum up. To not have West Indies as part of the World Cup is, to me, unimaginable. I can echo the sentiments of many fans and West Indian supporters, of whom there are still many.

Coming at the back of the 2021 T20 World Cup disappointment, and then not making it into the main round of the 2022 T20 World Cup, it is a stifling reality of where the [West Indies] cricket is at the moment. Not just being with the Associate nations, but that some of those nations are beating you quite convincingly. So there's a lot of work to be done almost immediately, because the talent level, which I know there is, deserves better representation, or certainly a bigger need to express itself.

The results from the recent ICC events you speak of, do they give you the feeling that something like this was on the cards? That this was always a possibility? And does that make you feel like this slide could have been arrested sooner?

Yes, it has been a gradual decline. I've always said this pre-dates this group of players. We haven't played consistently good ODI cricket against the top nations for perhaps a decade now. The T20 team, after having been two-time champions, they have slid. So like big corporations who were at one time at the peak of their powers, and then through, I suppose, a lack of vision or whatever you want to call it, they disappeared off the business scene, [and that is what has happened] for West Indies cricket, two-time world champions, who popularised the field for ODI cricket.