Trinidad Super50 triumph & 4-day success important for West Indies
Two characteristics noticeable in the legendary West Indies cricket teams of the post-World War II era were depth and the predominance of one territory in each nation, which usually became the core of their first XI.
The first great West Indies team from 1963-68 had a strong Barbadian influence and was captained by legendary batsmen Sir Frank Worrell and Sir Garfield Sobers and included the fast bowling duo of Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith and key squad players like Conrad Hunte, Seymour Nurse and all-rounder David Holford.
Barbados even challenged a World XI in 1967. Not bad for a little island of 166 square miles.
The giants from the 1976-95 period alternated between a Barbadian and Antiguan backbone. The quartet of Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Malcolm Marshall and Joel Garner represented Barbados while Sir Vivian Richards, Curtly Ambrose, Richie Richardson and Andy Roberts came from the latter territory.
Can a Trinidad and Tobago Super50 triumph and resurgence in the longer version of the game have a similar impact on West Indies’ cricket fortunes?
Last November after the West Indies were embarrassed in the Sachin Tendulkar farewell, two test series in India, second vice-president of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board Lalman Kowlessar stated in a Trinidad Guardian article that Only T&T can rescue WI cricket.
He insinuated: “The revival of West Indies cricket may well depend on Trinidad and Tobago’s ability to churn out quality players in the Test match arena much as they have done in the T20 game.”
Initially one might say Kowlessar was just hyping the credentials of his native Trinidad in a baseless and insular manner, instead of speaking in the wider interest of West Indies Cricket. After all it was only last year, many in Trinidad were genuinely perturbed at break of the national team for the inaugural Caribbean Premier League.
However deeper analysis of Kowlessar’s assessment and its clear he could be correct.
The talent within the T&T line-up in recent Super50 clash versus Combine Campuses and Colleges unmistakable. The starting XI read: Adrian Barath, Evin Lewis, Lendl Simmons, Darren Bravo, Dwayne Bravo, Jason Mohammed, Denesh Ramdin, Kevon Cooper, Rayad Emrit, Sunil Narine, and Ravi Rampaul while Keiron Pollard was absent through injury.
Apart from Mohammed, the other eleven players are players of West Indies and international standard, that should be the heartbeat of the regional team for the foreseeable future.
After Trinidad and Tobago ended a 21-year drought with back-to-back four-day titles in the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons, many predicted the start of a golden era for the dual-island republic in regional cricket.
But T&T’s success had been predominately domestic one-day and Twenty20 competitions, winning four of six tournaments before the CPL was implemented and making the region proud in the Champions League.
They have won three of the last six 50 overs tournaments, but the last triumph was back in the 2009 tournament in Guyana.
It’s no coincidence that eight of 15-member 2012 West Indies T20 World Cup winning squad hailed from Trinidad.
Regardless of that global triumph, true respect in the game still comes from the state of your Test team and it is this arena that West Indies must triumph if it wants to be the best test team in the world again.
Doctor Carla Rauseo, writing for the Trinidad Guardian in March 2013, suggested an interesting synopsis on why Trinidad and Tobago and, by extent, the West Indies team now excels in T20 cricket:
“The West Indies, and more specifically, T&T, are powerhouses in T20 cricket for one very large and embarrassing reason. Simply, we excel in T20 cricket because the characteristics of the game reflect the qualities of our society.”
Ouch.
Jamaica is the big dog in the first-class competition now and copped the last five consecutive titles.
And, curiously, Jamaica has achieved all this with minimal input from its most high profile players, Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels.
But why has this island’s dominance failed to noticeably benefit the West Indies?
In the last two decades of Caribbean cricket, a decline in the standard of the domestic first-class scene has coincided in the regional team’s declining fortunes.
Jamaica, in my view, has been best at exploiting the mediocrity of its opponents in the four-day game rather than being a great team in its own right. The performances of two of its key players, captain Tamar Lambert and spinner Nikita Miller, suggest as much.
Lambert is regularly praised as the best captain in regional cricket but barely averages 30 with the bat in his first-class career and was not seriously considered when Gayle was controversially lost the West Indies captaincy in 2010. It is not a batting record that would recommend anyone for the international stage and he has never played for the West Indies.
Miller, on the other, might have the best domestic average for a spinner in any domestic first-class competition worldwide with a staggering 15.44 runs conceded for his 244 victims. On stats alone, Miller looks like Alf Valentine reincarnated.
Caribbean batsmen are appalling at playing spin and Miller thrived through little more than nagging accuracy. But, at international level, the top batsmen are not be troubled by a spinner who does not turn the ball significantly and, as such, Narine and Shane Shillingford have proved to be better picks for West Indies.
Jamaica is a steady outfit. But it is the ability to improvise and innovate that gives present Trinidad and Tobago players the edge at the higher level and we already know what they can do against international opponents due to their adventures in the condensed format of the game.
A big performance in tomorrow Nagicor Super 50, semi-final clash versus Jamaica could be a fitting start as Trinidad and Tobago sets its sights on regional one-day and later first-class supremacy. Perhaps West Indies cricket would be better off for it.
Courtesy clrjames cricket
