Says Royston Alkins
Now that the Guyana Jaguars are assured a place on the next flight home, returning home disappointingly empty handed after another sad limited-overs showing at the Regional 50 overs level, tough decisions will have to be made if the problems in the shorter format of the game are to be remedied.
Whether it is causing the administrators of the game sleepless nights or not, 13 years without a title is cause for concern and something needs to be done to address Guyana’s failure to win a Regional limited-overs title.
It is customary that harsh decisions follow sports teams after they are unsuccessful at either defending or winning championships. Talks about revamping the structure or a change in personnel usually cloud the atmosphere.
This is certainly a practice in other parts of the cricket world. Just ask former England Coach Andy Flower if his sacking was warranted after a disappointing 2014 Ashes showing or South African Mickey Arthur who endured a similar fate when Australia slumped to what was considered one of the lowest points in that nation’s cricketing history during the 2012/ 13 summer.
The question is, should we use those examples as a measuring stick? Certainly we should, if we are genuinely interested in moving the sport forward.
It should be noted however, that I am not suggesting that current coach Esuan Crandon become the scapegoated for the team’s unsuccessful campaign.
Crandon has been doing a fine job with the team and we have been seeing success albeit in the longer format of the game with a few championships to show for it. He should feel bitter though at the situation that has been nurtured even before he took over.
The game, however, is evolving with power-hitting and reverse dabs among other cheeky expressions becoming the new norm in the sport but it seems as if Guyana has ignored those changes and is quite content to remain in the mould of looking pretty in forward defence mode with bat and pad close together.
On the contrary, Barbados has been selecting towering batsmen who can hit a long ball and the Trinidadians are adapt to honing other less muscled free-scoring methods.
The quandary is either that our boys are either ill-suited for coloured clothes cricket and they refuse to acknowledge the impact of T20 cricket or they have failed to embrace the game’s changing nature. Not that they are all to be blamed, because a lack of cricket and antique coaching approaches can contribute to this growing issue.
The situation would have been somewhat accepted if Guyana was producing Test cricketers at will. That would have been the perfect excuse but even that is befuddling. On the one hand we are failing to win limited-overs titles with our players looking as vintage as they come in the shorter format while we fail to produce Test cricketers at our whim even while winning the regional Four-Day competitions.
We need to start developing careers and results. The selectors might need to look at who is next in line.
But who is to be blamed for lackluster showing? The players? The coaching staff? The administration?
Answers to those questions will rub even the toughest of characters the wrong way but answers are needed and those of the affirmative action variety.
For starters, we can bring cricket administration to a state of normalcy. It is no secret that political infighting has been one of the major issues plaguing Guyana’s national sport. The administrative powers can’t seem to charter a collective course for the sport because they are most concerned with being in power.
On the other end, our players have been the most inconsistent of the “Big Four,” in limited overs tournaments.
Barbados defeated us at our own game when they spun us out in the first game. Jamaica intimidated us with pace and the contest against the Combined Campuses and Colleges Marooners could have gone either way. Those teams have refused to remain in the margin of what used to be and have found the right limited overs formula. Just look at the amount of players who play in T20 leagues around the world who come from other regional territories as opposed to those who come from Guyana.
Apart from Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine Chanderpaul who aren’t bashers themselves, only Ronsford Beaton and Christopher Barnwell have played in leagues outside of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL). Surely, someone has taken stock of that. It’s simply a reflection of what we aren’t doing at the domestic level.
It will be interesting to see what steps are put in place to reverse our fortunes in limited overs cricket. Whatever they are, we do hope that they are results oriented.
