asks Donald Duff
After securing a creditable 1-1 series draw with Sri Lanka in the 2008 Digicel Home series and then winning the One-Dayers 2-0, cricket fans in the region are awaiting with bated breath the arrival of the `Awesome Aussies’ and the subsequent three-test series.
In their two previous series the West Indies team endured mixed results.
They fell away after a positive start in South Africa, where they won the first test and lost the remaining two but showed tremendous character to square the series against Sri Lanka after losing the first test at the National Stadium at Providence, in the first ever test to be played at that venue.
Faced with the prospect of a historic first test series defeat to Sri Lanka in the Caribbean, the West Indies rebounded to win the second convincingly, avoiding some measure of embarrassment in the process and staving off a historical win for Mahela Jayawardene’s team.
This coming series was seen as providing the ultimate test for Chris Gayle’s West Indians at the end of which, a proper assessment of the team, its new coach John Dyson, its captain and the direction the team was heading could have been made.
Now, however, recent developments; namely the banning of Marlon Samuels and the question mark over Chris Gayle’s availability, will make any assessment on the outcome of the series moot.
Certainly the question to ask now in light of the absence of Marlon Samuels, banned or about to be banned for two years and the injury to Gayle, is whether the West Indies will be competitive.
The West Indies players arrived in Antigua on Sunday night and began a seven-day camp the following day and, according to informed sources, the 14-member team will be announced on Saturday.
Despite the fact that the three IPL stars, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dwayne Bravo were not named in the 17-man squad for the Antigua camp, they are expected to be included in the 14-man squad for the first Test pending their availability and fitness.
The three players are expected to return to the Caribbean on Sunday and if chosen, which is more than likely, will be involved in another three-day camp which starts Monday in Jamaica.
Gayle, who did not play in the current IPL series in which he was signed to play with the Kolkata Knight Riders team for US$800,000 and despite not being fully recovered from his groin injury, is a part of the Antigua camp.
West Indies manager, Omar Khan, has said that Gayle will be assessed by the physiotherapist before a decision is taken regarding his availability for the series.
“We are hopeful that Chris will be ready to face the Australians. As we know this will be a very important series for us,” Khan said.
Even if Gayle is not ready, Dyson certainly believes the West Indies are.
“We know it will be tough against Australia but we are ready for that challenge,” he has declared.
The training squad does include a couple of new names in 19-year-old Kemar Roach, the former West Indies Under-19 speedster who played in the 2006 Youth World Cup in Colombo, Sri Lanka and 21-year-old former West Indies U-19 player William Perkins, a standout performer for Trinidad in Twenty20 cricket, but it is difficult to see those players making the final cut and Dyson is also of that opinion.
“We believe the bulk of the team against Australia will come from the squad that played against Sri Lanka,” he said.
This means that the West Indies by and large will be at full strength, although the latter word is certainly not easily associated with a team ranked second to last in the ICC test rankings only above Bangladesh and eighth of 12 One-day teams ahead of “also ran” teams like Bangladesh, Ireland, Zimbabwe and Kenya in that order.
It has taken the Australians roughly five years to return to the Caribbean after they won the 2002/3 series 3-1 over a much stronger team led by retired multiple world record Holder Brian Lara.
The `Awesome Aussies’ won the tests at Bourda, Queen’s Park Oval and Kensington Oval by the margins of nine wickets, 118 runs and nine wickets before the West Indies won the final test at the Antigua Recreation Ground by three wickets and scoring a world record 418 runs with centuries from Sarwan (105) and Chanderpaul (104) in the process. They will find a West Indies team in transition with players who appear solidly behind Gayle in a way they never were under Lara and hoping, much like India did recently, to shatter the aura of invincibility of the Aussies and in the process regain the Sir Frank Worrell trophy or at the very least, put up a dogged fight on home turf.
Whether the team will allow the spectre of Samuels’s ban to affect its performance or whether they will be able to shrug off the effect of the mercurial batsman’s absence remains to be seen. Certainly the loss of Samuels will be a blow to a team which depended on his amazing but inconsistent batting and flat off-spin bowling.
Should Samuels be banned for more than two years, the career of this talented but temperamental batsman who is still struggling to make a lasting impression in international cricket, could come to an unsatisfactory end although he could still make a living from the ICL or IPL, where his talents are ideally suited. The ruling on Samuels could not have come at a more inopportune time and it is most unfortunate that a batsman with so much talent, has not allowed that talent to work for him. The Australians begin their tour on Friday with a three-day match against a Jamaican Select XI before taking on the West Indies in the first test four days later. Skipper Ricky Ponting, not withstanding the lowly status of the West Indies team, is said to be wary of the home team especially fast bowlers Jerome Taylor, Fidel Edwards and Daren Powell.
“I think of late they have probably played a little better and I think they are starting to turn things around,” Ponting said.
“As always they (West Indies) will pose a bit of a threat in home conditions,” he said. “But saying that, I think with some fresher faces around our group, as well as a bit of a change in personnel from the last (test) game that we played, I think it is a really good opportunity for this team to keep forging its own identity,” he added.
Ponting’s Australian side has seen some changes with the retirements of leg-spin wizard Shane Warne, metronomic fast bowler Glenn Mc Grath, opening batsman Justin Langer, classy middle-order batsman Damien Martyn and wicket keeper/ batsman Adam Gilchrist.
The team also has a new vice captain in Michael Clarke who replaced Gilchrist but latest reports suggest that Clarke might miss the first test following the death of his fiancée Lara Bingle’s father.
The test series against Sri Lanka was poorly attended and led to some impromptu measures by the West Indies Cricket Board. One would hope that the upcoming series will fuel spectator interst once more and that test cricket already reeling from the impact of Twenty20 cricket and the current IPL series will see a revival of sorts.
It is hoped too that the fans will turn out in their numbers for the tour which ends ironically, with the only Twenty20 encounter on June 20.
