It did not take the regional cricketers long to dispel the belief that the team was beginning to show some improvement and that fans could expect a more competitive team under its new leader.
Nor did it take them long to debunk the myth that Ramnaresh Sarwan’s team was a different unit under Chris Gayle.
Judging from the results of the first test of the Digicel Home Series, it was, as Tony Cozier once wrote, “de ja vu all over again.” All the regional superstars needed to show that it was `same dance, different day’, was one test.
That they decided to take the historic first test match to show their true maroon colours simply means that West Indies cricket and its history mean little to these stars.
Frankly speaking, the team did show some positives during their last overseas sojourn in South Africa.
The win in the first test, the first by a West Indies team in three tours to the African continent had fuelled expectations that Gayle, not Sarwan, was the right man for the job and that the team was apparently about to turn the corner.
The team’s subsequent defeats in the second and third test matches was put down to a combination of factors including injuries, which robbed the team from being at full strength after the first test. Now, however, it’s back to the sobering and unflattering reality that the team’s losses are set to continue and that they are not confined only to overseas tours but even at home, and that changing the captain was simply not the solution.
What exactly has brought about this present position?
Well, one of the reasons for the continual decline in the performance of the team has to do with the selectors.
Some of the players simply are not ready for international cricket and all one has to do is to look at their averages either in regional competitions or at the test and one-day levels to find that out.
Players who average 20s and 30s simply will not cut it and the selectors should stop the recycling experiment and try other options or other players.
Another reason is that playing for lucre has replaced playing for pride.
Players now would rather play for money than for their country despite their protestations to the contrary.
Still another reason is that the West Indies Cricket Board is not investing in those young players who should form the nucleus of the team in another few years.
Where are the `A’ team tours for those fringe West Indies players?
And a fourth reason is that players have no opportunity to work on problems which might be affecting their batting.
Even world record holder Brian Lara had turned to Sir Garfield Sobers whenever he was in a batting funk.
TURNING THINGS AROUND
Can this present crop of West Indies players turn things around, win the second test and square the series?
That remains to be seen. The West Indies selectors have named an unchanged team.
Whether that will translate into an unchanged performance remains to be seen.
One of the problems with this team is that they complain too much.
Greeted with an easy-paced wicket at Providence, instead of jumping for joy and feasting on the platter served up before them with runs galore, they complained.
No wonder they lost the test. Professional cricketers learn to adapt to whatever are the conditions. They do not complain but get on with the job.
On a batting wicket where two Sri Lanka batsmen scored test centuries, the West Indians failed to score even one.
Their best efforts were half centuries from Ramnaresh Sarwan (one in each innings) and Dwayne Bravo.
Certainly on a pitch which held no terrors for the batsmen and which did not seem to offer too much assistance to Muttiah Muralitharan, the West Indies batting could be described as lacking application.
That they contrived to get themselves dismissed on the last day when they should have been able to hold out for a draw suggests that the West Indies batsmen seem unconcerned about the record of defeats they are accumulating.
They enter the second test at the Queen’s Park Oval tomorrow knowing that only a victory can help them salvage the series. That’s the least they can try to do now.
