I don’t want to write anything in this space today.
Why? I am hurting. Deeply.
As one who follows the West Indies and Barbados cricket teams, the last few weeks have been a bitter pill to swallow.
Truth be told, the least said the better. It is for that reason I don’t want to take up column inches to analyze the shortcomings of both teams.
I, therefore, will not tell you that I did not expect West Indies to go beyond the quarter-finals of the World Cup.
I won’t say that the reality is that over the past two years we have struggled to beat teams ranked higher than us in the ICC rankings.
Neither will I mention that the only teams we got the better of were Netherlands, Bangladesh and Ireland – three sides below the West Indies in the pecking order – and that we lost to South Africa, England, India and Pakistan – teams ranked higher than us.
I will not target our senior players for letting the side down – Chris Gayle, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan managed only one half-century in 15 innings among them.
I cannot try to make captain Darren Sammy a scapegoat. Before he was appointed to the position last October, we knew he never commanded a settled place in the team.
I will not say that despite his impressive handling of the team on the field that I am disappointed with his modest returns in the tournament – 54 runs (ave. 9.00) and four wickets.
I will not attempt to figure out what was the thinking in having an unbalanced line-up for the matches against England and India when wicketkeeper Devon Thomas, hardly a distinguished batsman, was slotted to bat at No. 6 to be followed by a long tail.
It should not be admitted that if we had picked our best team for the quarter-final match against Pakistan, Sammy would have had to sit it out to accommodate exciting all-rounder Andre Russell, who only two matches earlier, scored 49 and grabbed four wickets against England.
I will say, however, that the performances of Russell, fellow pacer Kemar Roach, and first-time leg-spinner Devendra Bishoo were worth listing among the positives. Add those to the names Adrian Barath and Darren Bravo and it gives us five players 25 years and under who offer encouragement for the future.
I won’t acknowledge that we’ve said the same thing about several players over the past decade who failed to transform promise and potential into productivity and performance.
In turning my attention to the Barbados team, I was so disappointed with their sixth-place showing that I refused to check the records to confirm if this was the first time ever that we conceded first innings points in every single match.
I cannot let everyone know that an experienced bowling attack that included Pedro Collins, Fidel Edwards and Tino Best for most of the season conceded totals of 538, 413 and four other totals of more than 300 and only restricted the opposition to less than 250 on two occasions.
I also want to hide the fact that our three leg-spinners – Shamarh Brooks, Ryan Layne and Nikolai Charles – could only muster six wickets among them in nine matches.
I do not want to remind you that Dale Richards, our most consistent opening batsman for the better part of the last decade, and Kyle Hope, Division 1 cricket’s leading run-scorer for two successive seasons, both lost their places after modest runs that did not include a single half-century between them in 14 innings.
I will not say it was perplexing to follow the snail-pace approach against Windwards when Barbados took up five sessions and 148 overs to score 341 in their first innings.
Youngsters dropped I will also ignore the fact that our selectors, who wanted to expose our youngsters to the West Indies selectors, ended up dropping four of them – Hope, Brooks, Jason Holder and Roston Chase – during the season.
It is best to leave alone outside the off stump the Tino affair which appeared to show that the selectors and the Barbados Cricket Association’s board were at loggerheads on the evidence of the exuberant fast bowler’s reinstatement to the team for the third-round game when the selectors opted not to pick him after a one-match suspension.
I will not even bother to highlight that the Combined Campuses and Colleges team, a squad with eight Bajans, finished the preliminaries top of the standings. Here was a side comprising a few Barbados “rejects” that showed the “real” Barbados team how it should be done.
Things can’t be depressing forever.
The next time I have the opportunity to fill this space will be the first Friday of next month, immediately after West Indies complete a five-match ODI series against Pakistan.
Hopefully, I’ll write something this time.
