BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – West Indies legend Michael Holding has identified the batting trio of Nicholas Pooran, Shimron Hetmyer and Shai Hope as proof of the exceptional talent in the Caribbean, and believes they can serve as the catalyst for the regional side’s revival in coming years.
Contending all three players were good enough to make any team in the world, Holding said their talents now needed to be harnessed properly and their focus enhanced, in order to transform them into genuine world class batsmen.
“I see light at the end of the tunnel [for West Indies cricket] because I see talent and once there’s talent, there has to be light at the end of the tunnel,” Holding told Starcom Radio’s Mason and Guest cricket show.
“It’s a matter now of whether we can garner that talent. If we can produce the best of that talent and then of course produce a good team, because individual talent isn’t going to go as far as a good team with a good team spirit and good management structure around that team.”
He continued: “Anyone can look at teams and look at [players] and say ‘yeah, that guy looks as if he knows what he is doing’, and I can call three names immediately that I think have a lot of talent in the batting department – Pooran, Hetmyer, Hope.
“Is anyone going to tell me those three guys can’t bat? And there are others but I’m picking those three because I think those three are the most talented I’ve seen in the last two or three years.
“Those guys have talent, it’s now a matter of garnering that talent and making sure these guys can exhibit the right discipline to get the best out of themselves, and I’m absolutely sure there are other youngsters in the Caribbean who can come around that nucleus and give us a good team.
“When I look at cricketers, I look and see who among these guys I think could make other teams around the world. That’s how I look to see if we have talent, and those three guys I think could make most other teams around the world as batsmen.”
The 26-year-old Hope has dominated the one-day format where he averages 52 from 78 matches with nine hundreds. Last year, he was one of the leading players, averaging 61 while scoring four hundreds.
In 2017, he became the first batsman to score a hundred in each innings of any match at Leeds, in 118 years of first-class cricket at the storied venue.
However, those centuries remain his only triple figure scores in Tests and he boasts a disappointing average of 27.
Hetmyer, 22, has also made his mark in the one-day format with five hundreds and an average of 36, though he has found the longer game more challenging, with only five half-centuries and an average of 27.
Fellow left-hander Pooran, 24, has enjoyed a purple patch in one-dayers where he averages 49 with a hundred and seven fifties. He has never played Tests.
Holding, a well-respected television cricket analyst, also dismissed the often-levelled criticism of contemporary players that they lacked the quality of past greats. Rather, the Jamaican argued that the major difference now was the different social circumstances in which Caribbean players now found themselves.
“I don’t think there’s something necessarily missing from the makeup of the current day cricketer [in comparison to] the makeup to the former cricketers, even before my time,” Holding contended.“I think it’s just a matter of the focus. I’m absolutely sure the great players who played before me, they were coming into a world and they wanted to impress upon the world the statue of the country and the islands they were representing.
“[It was the] same thing in my era in the 70s, 80s. When we went to England, we were quite adamant that we were going to let the Caribbean people who lived in England be proud of us and [let them know] they represented something of significance.”
He added: “That world has changed, not totally but it has changed a great deal where a Caribbean person now doesn’t necessarily have to think they have to prove to the rest of the world that he’s of worth. The pressure is not there to prove yourself so much now as before.
“It is now just a matter of each individual having their own pride of performance … so I don’t think these guys are made up any different to us [past players] but are growing up in a different world and I think it is up to the people that employ them [to find] some way of impressing upon them that it (inspiring others) is still important, not just [performance] for their personal well-being.”
