It is a puzzle that has gone unsolved for a couple of decades. Attempts to crack it involve mainly, but not only, the quality of pitches.
At their meeting in Barbados last weekend, West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) directors charged the cricket committee to have another go at coming up with suggestions of how “to prioritize the development of fast bowlers in the region and for the West Indies team, recognizing that the majority of the overs in regional tournaments are bowled by spinners and is impacting negatively on the production of fast bowlers for the West Indies team.’’
As it considers its fresh mandate, the committee, on which Courtney Walsh and Joel Garner are the only members from the glorious past of fast bowling dominance, is presumably familiar with what prompted the directors’ renewed concern.
Comparisons with the Seventies and Eighties, when Walsh and Garner were just two
