Players, coaches and officials on four major talking points from CPL
The emergence of potential fast bowlers When West Indies dominated world cricket, their battery of top-notch fast bowlers was arguably the most important facet in their armoury, and the decline in quality fast-bowling options since 2000 was a key factor in the team's fall. Caribbean pitches now do not usually encourage the development of fast bowlers, as spinners take a lion's share of the wickets.
However, Ian Bishop noted on Twitter during the CPL how Michael Hilton, the head groundsman at Sabina Park had done an excellent job with the pitch. It was a point also reinforced by Barbados Tridents coach Robin Singh, who said, "While the competition this year was certainly better than previously, I was particularly impressed and happy about the standard of pitches."
The end result was that some upcoming West Indies fast bowlers had an encouraging tournament, on surfaces that kept them interested. They included Alzarri Joseph (who notably hit AB de Villiers on the head during the series, and went on to have an impressive debut Test versus India), Kesrick Williams, Sheldon Cottrell and Delorn Johnson. Add to this Miguel Cummins claiming a six-wicket haul in the St Lucia Test against India, and Shannon Gabriel's improvement since the tri-series, and potentially the team has some solid fast-bowling options to work with.
Former West Indies fast bowler Sir Andy Roberts said the regional squad will continue to lose matches until their approach to the game changes. His statement comes on the heels of the team’s humiliating 237-run defeat against India in the third Test in St Lucia on Saturday. “If you’re a struggling team, you don’t try to draw matches, you try to win matches. And if you go out with a defeatist, defensive, attitude it’s going to show throughout your entire cricket, and that is how we have been playing,” Sir Andy said. “Look at the first morning of the Test match when you win the toss and put the opposition in to bat, but you start without a short-leg and what sense is that? So, we are always playing from behind. It seems as though now, West Indies don’t know how to lead,” he added.
On Thursday, the third day of the St Lucia Test, India saw rain wash a whole day's play out, with runs having been scored at about 2.5 an over on the first two days, with the bowlers' last memory of having taken a wicket 79.2 overs ago. By the end of the play on Saturday, the fifth day, India had taken 17 wickets in 63.5 overs to complete an incredible Test and series win, a win borne as much out of belief and intent as out of West Indies' lack of resistance after what hopefully wasn't a false down in Jamaica.
India began day five believing they could still win; West Indies did nothing to make India doubt it. After Bhuvneshwar Kumar's swing masterclass left India 285 in lead at the end of the fourth day, India quickly ran away to 60 runs in nine overs to leave West Indies with no chance of winning and 87 overs to survive. That was a big difference between Jamaica and St Lucia: there one counterattack put the hosts within sight of parity and gave them direction, here they didn't know where to go. Feet stopped moving, brains got muddled, plans went absent, and India stayed relentless. The victory, the first time India won two Tests in a series outside Asia since 2005 and the first time ever in the West Indies, arrived before tea.
A Test match that should have rightfully been heading for the tamest of draws after an entire day’s play was lost to rain came roaring back to life, thanks literally to one spell of distinguished swing bowling from Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Out of nowhere, Bhuvneshwar found the rhythm to swing the Duke ball, and as soon as he did so, the challenge before the batsmen was a completely different one. After beginning Friday's (August 12) fourth day of the third Test on 107 for 1 in response to India’s 353, West Indies went from a confident 202 for 3 to 225 all out, proving that even one bad session can cost you dear in a Test match. By stumps, an aggressive Indian team had a lead of 285 with seven second-innings wickets to spare and at least 98 overs to play with on the final day, after reaching 157 for 3 batting a second time around. When he took the second new ball, Bhuvneshwar had the tidy if not particularly spectacular figures of 12-4-17-0. That was when the ball wasn’t shaping away or in appreciably. Once he engaged that perfectly locked wrist and released the ball with an excellent seam position, it did not take him long to snare his first victim. Jermaine Blackwood began brightly, tonking Bhuvneshwar back over his head, on the rise and through the line, for a one-bounce boundary but inexplicably gave up his natural attacking instinct for something more sedate.
Mr. Courtney Browne Chairman of Selectors West Indies Cricket Board Barbados
Mr. Darren Sammy, the distinguished West Indian cricketer, has advised me that, in your capacity as Chairman of the Selectors of the West Indies Cricket Team, you peremptorily informed him in a 30 second telephone conversation that he was being removed as the Captain of the West Indies T-20 Team and that his recent performances did not merit him a place on the team for the upcoming T-20 matches against the touring Indian Team.
I find this shabby treatment of Mr. Sammy to be unacceptable; indeed, I am sure that all right-thinking persons are extremely dissatisfied at your unceremonious and summary dismissal of Mr. Sammy as Captain and player. You simply cannot treat a former captain of the West Indies Test Team and a successful captain of two successive World Cup T-20 Championships with such disdain! Further, your sacking of Mr. Sammy, and the manner of his termination, on the eve of a Test Match in Mr. Sammy’s country, St. Lucia, to be played at the stadium which bears his name, display breathtaking insensitivity.
Elemental respect and common decency demand that once the Selectors had decided to remove Mr. Sammy as Captain and as player of the T-20 team, he ought to have been accorded the courtesy of a dignified face-to-face meeting with you, and his support enlisted for the transitioning to the new captain. Does the leadership of the West Indies Cricket Board or Chairman of Selectors have no sense of professionalism or any inkling of what is right or wrong in professional/industrial relations?
