Dear Editor,
I join the recent lamentation of Jeffery Dujon as regards the success, or lack thereof, of the West Indies Cricket Team over the last decade, particularly at Test cricket.
The pronouncements by those more knowledgeable souls: Tendulkar, Ponting, et al, that “Test cricket is here to stay” will be seriously challenged within the next decade or so. Most influential cricket administrators throughout the world are persons in their late 60s. A decade from now these persons, who currently champion the case for Test cricket, will be replaced by younger administrators with multi-sport involvements and multi-interests and will evidence a preference for shorter versions of cricket. Added to that, the outlook of players themselves will be multi-directional. An international cricketer a decade from now will be a businessman in his own right and will want more time to relate to his business(es). In other words, the longer version (Test) of the game will be seen as affecting the other money-making interests of the players.
While Test cricket requires a certain level of adeptness, fitness, technique and finesse to do battle for 5 days, the shorter versions of the game do not require of cricketers similar propensities. Kieron Pollard is a prime reference point. He has made millions playing in the shorter versions of the game, but he is poor Test material. There is sometimes a wide gap between brain and brawn.
Other sports: baseball; soccer; squash; tennis; boxing; etc, etc, all start and end on the same day and pay bigger bucks than Test cricket. Also, body wear reduces; recovery between games is more effective and players have the time to pursue other avenues of earning, even education. The viewership for one-dayers is also larger, thus an economic plus for cricket boards, etc.
If we were to examine the batsmen who are making centuries and batting long, they are of the old breed, have strong mental discipline and they are about 10 in number. But they too will soon leave the scene.
Why are so few batsmen making centuries in Test cricket?
Because their mental make-up lacks the facet of concentration. In fact, mental development efforts have very little success in today’s sportsmen generally. Let us examine one base factor. We only have to go to our school curriculum in the Caribbean and the wider world to understand why our brain responds more favourably to short-term stimulae. We have cut up core subjects at the GCE/CXC level into several sub-subjects. Thus, when previously eight core subjects required greater research and covered more real-life territory, our students now write 16 subjects, many of which have overlapping content, research data are easily available and we have replaced quality with quantity. In effect, we are engineering future performance and, by extension, greater expectation for actually doing less. This transposes itself into cricket, as indeed all sports the world over.
Another parallel aptly refers to how we behave at work or operate a business. We no longer work harder; we work smarter. We engage in Ponzi schemes; real estate scams. We build huge businesses with drug money and close down competitors via money laundering. The culture of ‘building a business‘ and all its implications has been replaced by the phenomenon of overnight affluence. Hence the characteristics of customer care and product knowledge and courtesy are replaced by ‘take it or leave it.‘ There is simply less attraction and reward for the Test arena, as it were, in business.
The home too has its place in the scheme of things. The home offers little guidance to our young. The significant number of juveniles in crime, the statistics of teenage pregnancies and HIV cases, all attest to this. Again, instant gratification, regardless. After all, we are in the cyber age!
I can allude to a wider range of analogies, but the foregoing should suffice to make the point.
It is therefore from this melting pot that our cricketers and those engaged in whatever sports, will emerge, be it at the club level or at the international level. Thus my posture that Test cricket will be the seldom insert rather than a regular part of the International cricket itinerary. India has seen that, thus IPL. Australia has seen it. Cricket will join the league of one-day sports which spin big bucks but develop personalities with short attention span, high aggression levels and a tendency to live for now, today.
West Indies cricket can have relevance, if it can be consciously tailored for the one-day, or less, versions of the game. They should stop playing Test cricket!
Yours faithfully,
T Jadunauth
