This time it wasn’t an embarrassment perpetuated by the West Indies Players Association (WIPA), rather one the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) brought directly upon itself.
Fans hardly had time to digest the news of another massive contract bestowed to team head coach Ottis Gibson, when the Board was promptly rewarded with a 5-0 hammering meted out on the Regional team by Australia in the just concluded Commonwealth Bank One-day 50 overs series.
Having to deal with a lengthy list of losses from West Indies Players Association (WIPA) lawsuits, the operations of the West Indies Cricket Board have ceased to become just a joke, but rather a recurring parody for Regional comedians.
Now, Gibson’s contract extension which doesn’t come cheap, given the epic US $ 1 million sum the WICB spent annually on ex coach Bennett King and his team, has started with the latest of a never-ending list of humiliating West Indies team performances.
Hot on the heels of losing a 50 overs ODI series for the first time by a full strength West Indies team to lowly Bangladesh, fans are now enduring the ultimate humiliation of being demolished by Australia for a historic ODI 5-0 bilateral series whitewash.
And the causes for the demolition Down Under are more of the same…… inept batting and questionable selection choices among others.
Apart from being blown out for 70, the lowest West Indies ODI score against Australia, at Perth where key paceman Tino Best was mysteriously omitted and which prompted former Aussie speedster Brett Lee to remark on television after two games on the world’s fastest pitch “Where was this bloke at Perth”, after the Barbadian was finally inserted and proved his worth at Sydney, when the series was already lost, all highlighted Gibson’s shortcomings as head coach.
Seemingly dented by the unrelenting Aussie pressure, West Indies sleep-walked through the home team’s innings in the final game at Melbourne. Their woes included dropped catches , mis-fielding, a wasted run-out when wicketkeeper Devon Thomas broke the stumps with his foot instead of the ball, and inexplicably incurring a no-ball from overlooking the circle fielding restriction.
As a result the buck has to stop some place and it has to be at Gibson’s doorstep.
For the three long years he has been in charge, he has been unable to influence the WICB to hire a permanent team batting coach despite the repeated displays of poor technique by almost everyone. Former batting ace Desmond Haynes was used as a consultant for a brief period, but now it is back to square one. Even Bangladesh has a batting coach, which was rewarded when they batted to victory to clinch that memorable 3-2 ODI series there last December.
Also one is also left to wonder why no approaches have not been made to have Dennis Waight the physical training guru of yesteryear, be used as a consultant to prevent the current never-ending spate of fast bowler injuries. Waight was the man who moulded the “Four Prong” pace attack of the ‘Dream Team’ into a longstanding fighting fit force that terrorized the world.
Despite Gibson’s claim as a fitness fanatic, his pacemen never last one full series without ‘breaking down” From Ravi Rampaul to Fidel Edwards to Kemar Roach, they all seem as fragile as the next dry twig.
In one of his recent newspaper columns Colin Croft, a member of that “Four Prong” pace attack alluded the current injury problems to a lack of road work, or jogging mileage among the pacemen. He said he jogged 50 miles a week as a player, and had the reputation of being the strongest of the four which despite doing Tests, ODIs, County Cricket and Regional games, never ‘broke down ‘with the alarming frequency of the current bowlers.
In a 2007 interview with Jerome Taylor, a member of the modern pace-bowler brigade, he was asked by this writer about his jogging mileage, to which he replied he goes to the gym.
That probably explains Taylor’s problem then and ex-team-mates’ now.
Under Gibson’s charge the once mighty Caribbean Kings of cricket, have not beaten any of the higher world ranked countries —-none in the top five, much less top three, in any series in both (ODI , Tests) forms of the game.
Yes, West Indies would’ve won a Twenty20 World Cup title towards the very end of Gibson’s contract, but the shortest form of the game is hardly any measure of a team’s real ability. Three hours of hit or miss batting and defensive bowling amounts to nothing more than chalk to cheese compared to batting and bowling consistently well for 10 times that time in Test competition or two times longer in 50 overs games. Any recent check would reveal that Michael Holding, the former “Four-Prong” member and now one of the worlds’s most sought after TV analysts, still refuses to cover T20 games. It probably means he still considers it rubbish cricket.
It is also true that West Indies defeated New Zealand and Bangladesh in truncated two-game Test rubbers and 50 overs competitions last year. But any less than average cricket follower would point out that those triumphs proved no improvement in standards. New Zealand and Bangladesh occupy the near cellar positions in the world rankings and for the record, West Indian fans are accustomed to enjoying success over those teams since Noah built his Ark.
In the case of New Zealand, West Indies defeated the Kiwis at home where any team worth its salt is not supposed to lose. Yet it was where the Caribbean team lost to India, South Africa, Australia and could only draw its Test rubber with Pakistan, under Gibson’s tenure. It was even worse in the ODIs with the home team losing to all three of those higher ranked teams. Most noteworthy, the results were not even close.
Away from home Gibson’s team could muster a draw in a rain affected three- Test series in Sri Lanka, while losing heavily in England and India. And it goes without saying that all of the corresponding ODI competitions were lost.
Taking into account that Gibson cannot be blamed for an amateur domestic structure in the Region where the best players produced can’t even make club teams elsewhere, and for team captain Darren Sammy’s tactical cluelessness on the field, he needed to have achieved much more than making one or two bowlers better, to deserve a three-year contract renewal.
The former England bowling coach deserved a demotion to that position with the West Indies instead. Or at best a one-year renewal as Head Coach.
If the International Cricket Council (ICC) had a “Luckiest Coach” category at its annual awards ceremony, Gibson would be a runaway winner.
And yes, it could happen only in the West Indies.
