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Winning’s good but blood more players |
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KIRK PERREIRA |
BY virtue of victory
over India in the second ODI in Jamaica on Saturday and the third
in St. Kitt’s on Tuesday, the West Indies has won seven of
their last eight limited-over matches.
An impressive statistic for a team that was throwing away matches
with the frequency the Prime Minister is losing friends …
but statistics can be extremely misleading.
Of course, the West Indies secured the first five of those seven
victories against a “schoolboy” team from Zimbabwe,
and very little value can be placed on those matches, even though
the regional unit, with Brian Lara back as captain and burning with
desire to turn things around before his cricketing clock stops ticking,
demonstrated a clinical efficiency in the mode of the emphatic whitewash.
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RAMNARESH
SARWAN ...
unbeaten 115 vs India.
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What is most interesting is that the West Indies are leading 2-1
after three matches, and all three matches were decided in the final
over.
Had Lara’s unit been a bit more purposeful in the field during
the opening match on Thursday, the West Indies may very well be
leading the Indians 3-0 in the five-match series.
It is still early days but at least India’s coach Greg Chappell
won’t be telling the media anymore the West Indies has forgotten
how to win.
After winning 17 games on the trot chasing totals, the Indians,
runners-up in the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup in South Africa, were
handed an unlikely defeat, since the winning target of 199 in 45
overs in the second ODI in Jamaica can’t be considered a monumental
task, given India’s glitzy batting line-up.
But one has got to give credit to the West Indians for hanging tough,
Lara for holding his nerve in a very tense situation, and for allrounder
Dwayne Bravo to be so amazingly cheeky, serving up a slower ball
to the in-form Yuvraj Singh after being struck for consecutive boundaries
from the second and third balls of the final over.
Nine out of ten times, Singh would probably have sent that sailing
back over the bowler’s head to the boundary.
Instead, he lost his middle stump, and for a change, it was India
that had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
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West
Indies had been down that particular road so many times in
the last couple of years, it was becoming nauseating to regional
fans.
Finally, there were wide smiles on the faces at Sabina Park,
and no doubt, across the English-speaking Caribbean.
What was extremely heartening was the performance of off-break
part-timers Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels at Sabina Park.
The pace bowlers, in particular Ian Bradshaw (three for 33
from 10 overs) and Fidel Edwards (one for 19 from seven overs),
set up the game to be won by making the early inroads to India’s
top order, but it was those 20 overs of off-spin that stifled
the Indian batting at critical stages of the match.
Gayle’s statistical returns of one wicket for 33 runs
from 10 overs was comparable with his more illustrious opponent,
Harbhajan Singh (10-0-32-1), while the enigmatic Samuels was
even better with two wickets for 30 runs from 10 overs.
The wicket helped the West Indies spinners and that is something
Lara and coach Bennett King have to underline in their notebooks,
since the West Indies will be based in Jamaica for the group
stage of the World Cup next year.
In additional, the wicket in St. Kitt’s was also conducive
to spin with all the spinners doing reasonably well.
I think it is safe to say West Indian spin bowlers are going
to have a pivotal role in the bid to reclaim the World Cup
trophy.
Therefore, I don’t understand why the selectors changed
their policy of rotation that was applied during the Zimbabwe
series, and they are now trying to play one settled starting
XI for the India series.
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DAVE
MOHAMMED
RAVI
RAMPAUL
RISHI
BACHAN
XAVIER
MARSHALL
... early career call.
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I rather fancy the Australian model where players on the ODI team
are rotated on a systematic basis.
What that does is allow a pool of around 15 or more players to be
fit and ready to represent the team without any apparent reduction
in team strength; the policy also prevents players from becoming
jaded or complacent, and it also gives the selectors a better sense
of which players are in their best form.
It is risky, I think, with the World Cup 10 months away, to be concentrating
on such a small unit of players.
I may be wrong but it seems the selectors have already made up their
minds which of the West Indies players will be playing next year.
This goes against the grain, sports fans.
I am still hopeful the West Indies selectors, aware of the fact
that we have to select players with the future in mind (Sven Erickson
picked 17-year-old Theo Walcott for the 2006 FIFA World Cup without
the teenager playing a Premiership match for Arsenal), could give
an opportunity to someone like a Rishi Bachan, arguably one of the
most promising young spinners in the region at the moment.
In the recent past, the precedent was set by selecting Ravi Rampaul
to the senior team as a teenager with very little first class experience,
and they did the same thing with exciting Jamaican opening batsman
Xavier Marshall, although that has proven to be a retrograde step
in Marshall’s career.
The left-arm orthodox spinner is often a difficult bowling proposition
in the ODI game; Daniel Vettori has been a rock for New Zealand
for years, while others, like Sri Lanka’s Sanath Jayasuriya
and England’s Ashley Giles have been quite effective, so I
am backing Bachan to “do the business”, once he gets
an opportunity.
One would think that the dry West Indies pitches are quite likely
going to be helpful to spin bowlers, so it may be worth the investment
giving young Bachan a “go”, as he is, in my opinion,
the best spin prospect in the region for the One-Day game.
What really is the sense calling Dave Mohammed when we know he is
not going to be bowling his left arm wrist spin to the best batsmen
in the World Cup.
Brian Lara may be an innovative captain, maybe even a daring captain,
but he would have to be completely off his rocker to throw Mohammed
in against the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting.
I know Mohammed took a heap of wickets in the regional tournament
but we are talking about the super high intensity of one-day internationals,
quite a different kettle of fish to the Windward Islands against
Trinidad and Tobago at Guaracara Park.
Winning matches must be the priority now, I agree, but the West
Indies has to mix that with the need to blood a group of players
for international cricket.
If we stick to too small a group of players, we face the risk of
a run of bad form or an unexpected injury with a couple of players
upsetting the make-up of the team.
The West Indies players need to be fit and ready to face the best
teams in the world with a nucleus of players whose skills have been
honed for limited overs cricket; with a slice or two of luck, the
West Indies team may yet surprise the world again.
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