THERE IS STILL fight left in the West Indies Test team.
Yes, Pakistan only lost three wickets in piling up nearly 600 in the first innings of the first Test and then contributed significantly to their capitulation in the second with reckless batting reminiscent of the Caribbean side at their very worst.
Still, West Indies hung on tenaciously through battling, disciplined innings from Darren Bravo and Marlon Samuels on the third day, and then a defensive masterclass of a hundred from the left-hander on the last which, together with the support of the middle and lower order, drew the West Indies within sight of a stunning upset in pursuit of 346.
It didn’t happen and two run outs put an anti-climactic seal on a sterling effort, a performance that could only be seen as pivotal if the beleaguered squad were to build on that showing under the lights in Dubai with similar determination in the remaining matches in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
If the bowling continues to look worryingly thin, notwithstanding Devendra Bishoo’s sensational eight for 49 in triggering the sandstorm that blew away the Pakistanis’ second innings, it is not helped by errors in the field.
Triple-centurion Azhar Ali was dropped twice on the way to equalling Lawrence Rowe’s 302 against England at Kensington 42 years ago, and on day one of the second Test, the returning Younis Khan and captain Misbah ul Haq both benefited from reprieves on the way to building another formidable first innings total.
Even if world-class consistency in batting and bowling are still some way off, not to mention the continuing ineffectiveness of the captain with the ball, at the very least the West Indies should be almost flawless in the field.
Perceptions of insularity
KIERON POLLARD IS the latest returning Trini T20 superstar to vent his spleen to the domestic media, following in the wake of Dwayne Bravo but also plunging headlong into the perennially choppy waters of Caribbean cricket’s nauseating parochialism.
“We have heard what has been said by well-respected persons about some at the West Indies Cricket Board and their feelings on Trinidad and Tobago,” he was reported by the Trinidad Guardian as saying last week, with the newspaper suggesting that the all-rounder was feeding off an apparent belief that Trinidad and Tobago citizens are being picked on.
There is nothing in West Indies cricket that rallies the rabid fanatics like the sense of victimhood because everybody feels that everybody else is biased and ultra-nationalistic and they are the only ones with a balanced, mature point of view.
It’s just that the balanced, mature point of view always seems to boil down to players from the balanced, mature individual’s home territory being victimised by the “wicked” WICB and their presumably spineless selectors who do the dirty work for the hierarchy.
So it was during the glory days of unprecedented dominance and so it has flourished during this generation of widespread mediocrity. At least one thing remains then from the golden era.
Might still makes right
ON THE SAME day that the absence of a couple elements of the Decision Review System technology (Hotspot and Snicko) deprived Shannon Gabriel of the chance to remove Younis Khan on day one of the second Test in Abu Dhabi, India’s administrators were proclaiming to the world that they had agreed to use the DRS for the upcoming Test series against England on a “trial basis” to “evaluate the improvements made” in the system.
How convenient that the game’s economic driver would deign to utilise a feature of international cricket for the first time in a bilateral series in eight years against another member of the big three (Australia being the other) who have essentially hijacked the sport for their own narrow-minded purposes.
Why wasn’t it trialled in the preceding series against New Zealand, and why isn’t the technology uniformly applied in all series involving all teams?
India are only doing what others have done before them in prioritising their own interests ahead of the greater good and growth of the game.
When Sri Lanka entered the Test arena in 1982, the all-powerful West Indies steered clear of the newcomers for more than 11 years and it would be another four years before they were entertained in this part of the world, by which time the era of dominance was well and truly over.
So we really can’t complain too much now about getting the short end of the stick from cricket’s powerbrokers because we did very little, if anything, to grow the sport when we had the strength and influence to do so.
As for the International Cricket Council, well, they have to wait for India’s blessing before making any decision, don’t they?
Fazeer Mohammed is a regional cricket journalist and broadcaster who has been covering the game at all levels since 1987.