I HAVE OBSERVED our cricketing performances and I think that the paltry showing by present day West Indian cricket is due to the absence of passion for the game. Regrettably, the kind of passion that made us kings of this game for two clear decades is apparently gone forever, it seems.
Our cricketers have plenty of untapped cricketing potential but again, I regret to say that they have absolutely no passion for the game; and this is reflected over and over in the dismal results. There is often the lame excuse that we are rebuilding the team. What nonsense! We have been using that inexcusable excuse for over a decade. It is simply the lack of passion and pride that has gone out of a game that has brought international fame to our hearts and to our region in times of a once glorious past.
Worse! It is my contention that a high percentage of our cricketing teams have more exuberance for the game of football than they do for cricket. Even our commentators can be accused of this regrettable contention.
Commentators, in the middle of a serious cricket match, can sometimes be heard spending more unwarranted time commenting on the state of football than they do on the cricket match they are supposed to be commenting on. I recently waited ten impatient minutes before I could get to hear the present state of the cricket game, simply because our local commentators were engaged in having a highly animated conversation about what was currently going on in the football arena.
SMH (shaking my head), the mind really boggles as to what can next be done to raise our cricketing standards. If I may offer a suggestion, I think that the selectors – based on higher levels of individual performances – should make players fight to maintain their place in West Indian cricket. Perhaps, this might put some consciousness back in their individual thinking, for each man will be forced to think sensible cricket when he is out there on the field. He will have to do this in order to keep his position or risk being dropped from the team.
In this way, the passion that made us kings of the game for two clear decades may begin to creep slowly back into cognition. This, I believe, might just be the difference that will finally make the difference to the present spate of dismal performances.
– LeRoy Gill