Ian on Sunday
Why this glaring discrepancy between prowess in the short versions and generally abject failure in Test cricket? I am anxious to hear an explanation. Does the explanation lie in the lamentable administration of the game in the region or does it lie in the psyche of the players themselves?
West Indies can, and they do, compete at the very highest level in international One Day and Twenty/20 cricket. In these shortened versions of the game we have the talent, the firepower, the energy and the inventiveness to equal any team in the world. No One Day or Twenty/20 series or tournament is beyond us winning. Gayle, Wayne Bravo, Chanderpaul, and a fit and fiery Fidel Edwards would be in anyone’s ODI or Twenty/20 team – and Sarwan also if and when he recaptures his form of a year or two ago as a ‘finisher’ par excellence. If we raised the level of our fitness, fielding and catching just one notch higher consistently we would be perennial favourites in these games.
Let us feel good about our prowess and success in One Day and Twenty/20 cricket. In the general gloom, constant controversy, frequent chaos and occasional farce which surrounds West Indies cricket, it is right to recall that we are among the best in the version of the great game designed specifically for our frantic age. After all, it is no small thing to be in the company of the leaders in the most popular versions of the game, the sort of cricket which has captured the imagination of millions and consistently fills the biggest stadiums; the game which, let us face it, fills the coffers with the most money – the game which may well be what in future excites the United States, China, South America and the wide world beyond the current core cricket countries. In other words, to mix kitchen metaphors, might it not be much better for us to be at the cutting edge rather than on the back burner?
But West Indies in Test cricket, to continue the kitchen metaphor, are a different kettle of fish – sardines indeed swimming with the sharks. We are near the bottom of the league and, despite a very narrow victory over England recently in the West Indies – thanks to two desperate tail-end stands – we seem stuck near the bottom. There are murmurings that Test cricket may be divided into two divisions and in such an event West Indies would certainly find themselves humiliated by demotion to the second division – a development hard and bitter to contemplate.
As a dyed-in-the-white-flannels traditionalist, I am immensely saddened by the decline in our Test cricket status. For me Test cricket is the game at its enduring best and most beautiful. The champions of Test cricket are the true champions of the greatest game in the world. What is more, I wonder whether it might not be true that cricketers need nurturing and exposure in Test cricket before they can emerge as stars in the shorter versions of the game. It is too early to say whether this is true, but I have a gut feeling that the concentration, consistency and discipline needed in Test cricket are attributes which players in One Day and Twenty/20 internationals must also cultivate to be remembered among the greatest. In any case, as things stand at present, winning at Test cricket is still the ultimate aim of the nations and the huge majority of players. So it fills me with despair that the West Indies are currently so bad at it.
Why is this so? Why this glaring discrepancy between prowess in the short versions and generally abject failure in Test cricket? I am anxious to hear an explanation. Does the explanation lie in the lamentable administration of the game in the region or does it lie in the psyche of the players themselves?
I am not myself able to offer an expert opinion on this issue. But, reading an article recently about the early 19th century English writer, William Hazlitt, I came across a passage in one of his sharp and beautifully written essays which made me wonder if in it there was the hint of a reason why West Indies are no longer good at Test cricket. Hazlitt can lay claim to be the first great sportswriter. The passage is from his essay ‘On Great and Little Things,’ and he is writing about the game of Rackets:
“Rackets… is, like any other athletic game, very much a thing of skill and practice: but it is also a thing of opinion, ‘subject to all the skyey influences.’ If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory. If you hesitate in striking at the ball, it is ten to one but you miss it. If you are apprehensive of committing some particular error (such as striking the ball foul) you will be nearly sure to do it. While thinking of that which you are so earnestly bent upon avoiding, your hand mechanically follows the strongest idea, and obeys the imagination rather than the intention of the striker.”
Perhaps, in the end, our players cannot find the belief in themselves to win at Test cricket but they can and do when they take the field in One Day and Twenty/20 internationals. Faith is necessary to victory.
