Greatest Mysteries in W.I Cricket

Sat, Dec 6, '03

 

by LAWRENCE ROMEO

With just three weeks to go until Christmas, I'm in the midst of preparing my Christmas wish list. Cognizant of the fact that as you grow older, your toys only get more expensive, and not being of an age where your parents can buy them for you, I decided to eschew the latest Sony Clie PDA, with the MPEG3 player and the little built in 310k pixel camera handy for taking surreptitious snapshots, for a less ostentatious wish.

With Christmas Parang playing in the background, I hit on it! If I could incorporate my gift with something near and dear to my heart, it would be perfect. So, this year, the best Christmas present ever would be to find answers to the ten greatest mysteries in West Indies cricket. In no particular order of importance, here is the list that I came up with:

Roger Braithwaite - How was he appointed CEO of the WICB without the job ever being advertised? Prior to that and ever since then, the WICB has sent out notifications for job vacancies to all and sundry. What happened with that vacancy? Was there a major technological and procedural break-down at WICB central?

Darryl Brown - Remember him? His selection to the West Indies team that played Pakistan in Sharjah as a replacement for the injured Marlon Samuels prompted quizzical looks and raised eyebrows around the Caribbean. He managed to appear in three ODIs for the WI, returning figures of 3 for 21 off his ten overs against Zimbabwe. He also appeared in 11 first-class matches for Trinidad and Tobago, for whom he took seventeen wickets. Strangely, ever since 2001 much has not been heard from Darrell Brown, and if there is anyone out there who could explain his ascendancy to the WI touring squad I would be grateful if they can enlighten me.

Ian Bradshaw - In an era when a Darryl Brown could wear West Indian colors, what does Bradshaw have to do to be selected to the Senior West Indies team? A consistent performer with both bat and ball for Barbados in first class cricket, Bradshaw may just throw up his hands in frustration, like Dinanath Ramnarine the WIPA president, and quit cricket altogether.

Kensington Oval, Barbados - What was it exactly that Prof Edwards did to the Barbados wicket that made it turn out the way it did against Australia in the third test of 2003? What was once the fastest, bounciest, most fast-bowler friendly wicket in the Caribbean, suddenly morphed into Bourda on a bad day, with the accompanying cracks and fissures to match! Maybe the goodly Prof should share his secret so that the other groundsmen in the Caribbean would know what *not* to do.

Adam Sanford - Whither the only indigenous Carib descendant to play for the West Indies? Sanford was announced to the West Indies team with great fanfare and made a bit of a splash in his first two test series, taking a total of twenty wickets at 39.70 including the great Sachin Tendulkar twice, Rahul Dravid twice, Ganguly twice and VVS Laxman once, so he did show that he had enough to work with. Or did he? Strangely Sanford has not been heard from since and while the West Indies employ 19-year-old fast bowlers to carry on the legacy of great Caribbean fast men, Sanford was last sighted plying his trade in club cricket in Barbados.

Franklyn Rose - Yet another fast bowler with enormous potential. Rose, who could have made a fair living as fashion model, having been signed by a model agency when in South Africa playing club cricket, was supposedly dropped for disciplinary reasons. Yet he was never cited for any disciplinary infractions, suspended or even warned by tour management. Boasting returns of 6 for 100 against India and 7/84 against South Africa, it was inexplicable to many fans why Rose was discarded by the West Indian selectors.

Brian Lara in Barbados 2003 - For this entry we return to the 3rd Test of the 2003 series, West Indies vs. Australia, Brian Lara was missing off the field for almost the entire second and most of day three when he finally appeared to bat down the order. The official explanation was never given but we know that the second day of the match coincided with Lara's birthday and rumors were rife that Lara was on a bender and suffered the effects accordingly. Lara defied all medical precedence though, because he miraculously recovered in time to start, and complete, with no obvious discomfort, the fourth test in Antigua which commenced just nine days after the end of the match in Barbados.

Marlon Samuels - The current enigma of WI cricket continues to astound and baffle with his on again off again imminent knee surgeries. In 2001 while West Indies were engaged with Pakistan in Sharjah, the WICB through Michael Hall, the then chief cricket operations officer said, "There has been a slow, imperceptible deterioration, I am told, and this could have happened at any time."

Fast forward to January of 2003, West Indies medical team panelist Dr. Akshai Mansingh issues another report, this time in response to Samuels' pullout of the pre-tournament camp due to pain in the same knee, "It is the importance of the competition and the long history of this injury that permits one to even consider his participation, but it must be clear that he may "break down" at any time, and that he should have further evaluation immediately on return. In fact he would be best served with constant evaluation during the tour as well." Wow, great stuff.even for the West Indies where things sometimes happen at a glacier-like pace, one would think that in the two year interval between the tour to Sharjah and the World Cup corrective surgery could have been done on the knee. The great mystery is when will the Samuels' knee hit the proverbial wall? Could that sound the death knell of his nascent career?

That Academy - Since the establishment of the West Indies Cricket Academy in 2001, the graduates have not really been setting the cricket world alight. In fact, many of them seem to have gone backwards. Ryan Hinds and Narsingh Deonarine are probably the two most visible graduates, and even though Ryan Hinds was able to play a few Test matches, he is very much out of contention for a test place due to below par performances in those games. At the moment Hinds is not even a lock to retain his place on the Barbados team. Deonarine too, has struggled to establish a place for himself on Guyana's first class team, however after scoring a century against the touring Australians earlier this year, once selected to the Guyana team for the Red Stripe Bowl, did not score heavily.

Jimmy's Finger - Finally, the biggest mystery in West Indies cricket occurred back in 1998 and occurred on the flight over to South Africa. No one knows what led up to it, but it seems that the WICB was able to use their considerable influence to swear all the passengers and crew on the aircraft to silence. What we do know happened is that Jimmy Adams somehow managed to sever a tendon in his pinkie, which effectively ruled him out of the tour before it even got started. The sexy version of what happened is that there was an altercation between two players and in trying to be the peace maker, Samuels was injured. The official version was that Adams was cutting into a rather crusty dinner roll, and the knife slipped and the rest slipped into the lore of unexplained history. I hope that the WICB sees my little wish list and indulges me with answers to my questions. In the meantime, I think I'll place that order for the Sony Clie.