SO here we go again.
The West Indies set out today on their latest overseas tour, to Zimbabwe and South Africa, under a new captain and coach and a reinstated manager,
The captain is Chris Gayle, the ninth in the dozen years since the start of the sickening slide from their extended domination of world cricket, the coach is the Australian John Dyson, also the ninth in that time even though he will make a belated entrance, and the manager is Clive Lloyd, the iconic skipper during the most glorious period of West Indies cricket history.
Propelled into the position by the latest in a staggering succession of injuries that have befallen Ramnaresh Sarwan and on the evidence of the players’ response to his leadership in a few limited-overs matches in England last summer, Gayle follows Richie Richardson, Courtney Walsh, Brian Lara (three times),Jimmy Adams, Carl Hooper, Ridley Jacobs (fleetingly), Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan into what has become the most insecure job in the game.
Seven years into his international career, his cricket has been characterised as much by his destructive, if inconsistent, batting as a manner as cool as Alcolado Glacial.
He was an unlikely candidate for the post until he briefly took over in England and energised a team trounced 3-0 in the Tests into a 2-1 triumph in the ODI series.
Prior to that he had ambled around the field during the World Cup in the Caribbean and the Tests in England with an air of indifference that infuriated some influential icons of the past and prompted then WICB president Ken Gordon and his executive committee to reject his subsequent choice as stand-in by the selectors.
When they forced Gordon’s hand and the executive did an embarrassing about-turn, Gayle was emboldened to publicly air his frustrations, and those of the players, at the failings on the WICB.
Gordon took offence and demanded an apology, Gayle refused and a showdown was avoided only after Gordon was replaced a month later by Julian Hunte.
Whether Gayle’s censure of his employers was out of place or not, the players clearly welcomed it as something that needed to be said. It boosted his stature within the group and helped explain the transformation between the mediocrity of the Tests and the subsequent energy of the ODIs.
Gayle’s capacity to inspire might not have been generally recognised by those who matter in the West Indies but it had been sometime back by Steve Waugh.
The former Australian captain noted during the West Indies’ tour of Australia two years ago that the team lacked “urgency and vibrancy” and was “therefore reactive, not proactive.”
He advised that it needed only one player to “initiate change by hustling between overs and liven up proceedings with a bit of chat out on the field” and he identified “the highly talented” Gayle as the one with “the presence and ability to influence those around him.”
There was a proviso, of course, and that was on Gayle changing his attitude.
The coming two months in southern Africa will be seminal for the new captain, even for West Indies cricket.
The West Indies have not had a captain who has genuinely inspired his team from within, rather than by his own exploits in the middle, since Lloyd himself.
Lloyd enjoyed the benefit of an abundance of absurdly gifted players. Gayle does not. But, as was briefly, but undeniably, evident in England last summer, Gayle somehow had the formula for getting the best out of what he had. The same seemed to hold true during Jamaica’s triumph in the KFC Cup last month.
It is a formula that will be put to a severe test, especially in South Africa.
Gayle, Lloyd and Dyson, whose only previous experience of West Indies cricket was as opener against the fury of Lloyd’s pace barrage in 1981, face an initial assignment as daunting as any that confronted their predecessors.
After five ODIs in Zimbabwe, a less demanding prelude that still carries its own hazards, on and off the field, the West Indies cross the border into a country they have found as intimidating on their previous visits as any, Australia not excluded.
The statistics in South Africa alone create an immediate psychological barrier.
The West Indies have lost eight of their previous nine Tests here, just holding out for a draw in the other. They have been beaten by South Africa in nine of their 12 ODIs and were eliminated after the first round of both the 2003 World Cup and the inaugural ICC Twenty20 World championships two months ago, succumbing to Bangladesh in their last international match in the latter.
It is the first time they come to South Africa without Brian Lara, whose sheer batting genius has inevitably left a irreplaceable void in the fallible middle order, if not in tactical direction.
His absence is compounded by Sarwan’s medical misfortune in the past 12 months. A fractured instep, a cracked finger, a dislocated shoulder and now a foot injury have been serious disruptions that have cost him the captaincy, to which he was elevated on Lara’s retirement after the World Cup failure in April.
Equally critical, it has eliminated an experienced, quality batsman in the pivotal No.3 position.
All this is a discouraging, but realistic, background to the forthcoming campaign, only exacerbated by the present strength of opposition.
Always formidable at home, the South Africans overcame Pakistan in both Tests and ODIs in Pakistan last month and returned home to overwhelm an admittedly injury-hit New Zealand by record margins in two Tests.
Jacques Kallis, for a decade a batsman who stands alongside any in the modern game through the sheer weight and consistency of scoring, has reeled off five hundreds in seven innings in four Tests against
Pakistan and New Zealand.
He has always possessed a hunger for runs but he has now combined this with a new aggression.
Hashim Amla, the first player of Asian descent to represent South Africa, finally fulfilled the potential with which the selectors have kept faith with successive hundreds against New Zealand in big partnerships with Kallis.
Yet the new player the West Indies will have to pay closest attention to is fast bowler Dale Steyn.
Physically constructed along the lines of the late Malcolm Marshall, lithe, athletic and of medium height, he generates serious pace with the mixture of control and hostility that is the hallmark of the best fast men.
He was simply too much for the hapless New Zealanders, claiming 10 wickets in each of the two Tests. He was encouraged by the pitches in Johannesburg and Centurion, both pacy and bouncy, which are not on the West Indies Test scheduled. But he also had a five-wicket haul in an innings against Pakistan on the lifeless surface at Karachi a few weeks earlier.
His presence, alongside Makhaya Ntini and Andre Nel, has meant the controversial exclusion of Shaun Pollock who has been South Africa’s Glenn McGrath for almost as long as the now retired McGrath was around.
With the Morkel brothers in reserve – Albie, a left-hander spoken of as the new Lance Kulsener, and Morne, a tall, exciting fast bowler – Pollock is unlikely to have many more Tests.
That South Africa can do without an all-round cricketer of such experience and class is confirmation of their present might.
It is bound to be another tough series for the West Indies – but it could be the making of Chris Gayle as captain.
