More often than he would like, Darren Sammy, West Indies captain, has been forced to respond to negatives: Is he worth his place in the team?
Has he been asked to resign? Has he considered resigning? Are his players disgruntled?
But when he goes out to toss this morning with Misbah-ul-Haq at the National Stadium here for this first Digicel Test match of the season, Sammy will be seeing an opportunity to succeed, not fail.
“To me, I’m very excited about tomorrow,” he said yesterday. “The way the guys have been practising with the help of Desi [Desmond Haynes, batting consultant] and the continuous good work of Ottis [coach Ottis Gibson], I think this team could do well and come out victorious in this Test series.”
The controversial absence of influential opening batsman Chris Gayle and fast bowler Jerome Taylor and the verbal barbs that batting lynchpin Shivnarine Chanderpaul has been sending towards the West Indies Cricket Board, the selectors and the coaching staff are distractions a struggling team can do without.
However, Sammy and his players can take confidence from history, both distant and recent.
Pakistan begin their seventh series in the Caribbean still searching for their first victory in a rubber. They will aim to do it with a squad which itself is in transition and with the recent setback of having lost former captain Younis Khan who returned home following the death of his elder brother this week. Younis’ experience and know-how in the middle order will be missed and places greater pressure on skipper Misbah.
Younis’ absence also means the tourists have no one in this series who has played in the Caribbean before. They have drawn their last two Test rubbers in South Africa and new Zealand under Misbah. But Pakistan remain a side that is unpredictable and given to batting collapses as dramatic as the West Indies are prone to producing.
Misbah, opener Mohammad Hafeez and the explosive Umar Akmal, combined with the dangerous pace spearhead Umar Gul and off-spinner Saeed Ajmal are likely to be the keys to any success Pakistan will have in the series and this first match.
Their last game here last Thursday, when they lost the fifth and final match of the One-day series by ten wickets, they will want to see as an aberration that will have no bearing on this game.
But Sammy and his men will take heart from their back-to-back wins in the ODIs.
“We won the last two one-day games, that itself [gives] a bit of confidence in the team. We’ve added some new players and they’ve been working quite hard; guys put in some good work into the practice game we had and the batsmen Sammy [Marlon Samuels[ and [Devon[ Smith, everybody looked quite good, so we all confident and we are ready for tomorrow.”
Middle order batsman Samuels, just returning to the international game following a two-year-ban, and Smith both scored heavily in the two-day practice match preceding this Test. But if the Windies go for five bowlers in an effort to win this match, the selectors will have the tough choice of having to leave out two of five from among a middle order of Darren Bravo, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, vice-captain Brendan Nash, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Samuels.
Sammy however told a media conference yesterday he was confident that whatever the final combination of the team, they “will go out there and do the job.”
He is not also worried about a lack of an additional spin option besides Devendra Bishoo in the squad.
“The Test match pitch looks similar to the one-day wicket. The attack we had, we bowled well against Pakistan, so…it’s left to see how the pitch plays.” In that match, seamers Ravi Rampaul, Dwayne Bravo and Sammy took seven wickets between them as Pakistan were dismissed for 140. The returning Fidel Edwards should provide more firepower than the Indian Premier League-engaged Bravo.
These are the positives on which the Windies skipper is focusing.
And despite the absence of Gayle and Bravo and the recent brouhaha involving Chanderpaul, he insists he is leading a happy bunch.
“Yes, we miss Gayle but it’s another opportunity for somebody else to step up,” he said.
“We are quite happy with the sessions. Yesterday we practised, everybody looked together, we played games and the team spirit is good. I expect everybody to go out there and play cricket for the West Indies.”
The next five days should tell much.
