da bet esporte： Six months ago, when the Reverend Wes Hall took over as thePresident of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), he said thatthe re-elevation of the West Indies to the top echelons of worldcricket has always been his ambition
Colin Croft10-Apr-2002Six months ago, when the Reverend Wes Hall took over as thePresident of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), he said thatthe re-elevation of the West Indies to the top echelons of worldcricket has always been his ambition. To achieve that, Hall said,"We have to be competitive. We know there is an intestinalresistance to change. It is a fact that people don’t like change,and they are not going to like this programme because it is notthe same old thing…so we have to change or perish, it’s asobvious as that. We have to look at this ‘dinosaurial’ syndrome.”The upcoming Indian tour of the West Indies, then, provides thehome team a chance to prove that they have overcome the”dinosaurial syndrome.”The problem with the West Indies of late has been that they havenever learnt from their defeats. They seem to have developed thelosing habit, having lost 23 of their last 27 away Tests and alsothe last home series they played – against South Africa in 2001.They should have lost to Pakistan too at home, but for one of theworst umpiring decisions ever. Debutant West Indian umpire BillyDoctrove gave Courtney Walsh “not out” after the latter hadclearly hit the ball to short-leg, the West Indies just a fewruns away from victory.Sports psychologists keep reminding us that losing is a habit,just as winning is. The current attempts to help the team losethe losing habit, then, are being directed at technique (not tobe ignored) rather than at the attitude of the players. Somehow,the latter seems to be more necessary.West Indies coach Roger Harper explained his views on the matter."There has been a myth going around that West Indian players arestrong technically. That is one of the greatest myths that hasbeen thrown around the West Indies for some time now. When welook at our cricket, we realise that we have a lot of technicaldeficiencies. So it is not a case of us having great techniqueand not being able to execute, but our technique is not up toTest-level.”He said that this did not happen earlier, as there were always"old experienced players who took it upon themselves at the clublevel to develop the young players, imparting technical knowledgeand sharing their experiences with their young players.””After the 80s, that sort of thing did not happen,” added Harper.”The older players (former Test and first-class players) justleft the game, some migrated or because of economic reasonsweren’t able to put in enough time at the club level with theyounger players.””The youngsters were not brought on the same way as the playerswere previously brought on. This means that they were comingthrough without the proper background they needed to have whenthey got to first-class level, much less international level,”Harper emphasised, explaining why West Indian cricket hassuddenly taken a nose-dive.Probably understanding this, the current training camp for theplayers selected in the preliminary squad for the series againstIndia saw the unprecedented involvement of previous greats likeSir Garry Sobers and Andy Roberts, among others. Sobers wasoptimistic that the players, whom he had seen at the camp, could,with the right guidance, do the region proud.”What I have seen is a lot of good youngsters, and if they getthe right guidance, they will certainly help the West Indies inthe near future. There are just the technical aspects, and theway of thinking that must be honed as cricket at Test level isplayed from the shoulders up,” Sobers said.The man who was named as one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of theCentury said he was convinced the downfall in the last sevenyears was caused as much by the deleterious change in attitude asanything else.”They must learn and enjoy reading the game, knowing what shotsshould and should not be played in certain circumstances. That iswhat I have been working on – looking at them in the nets, tryingto get them to buy into the best habits. They have beenlistening, they are paying attention,” he said.Talking about the Indians, Sobers said, "They are coming to win.This is where we will find out how much these boys have improvedor how badly their morale has been damaged."He felt that the West Indies, for their part, needed a good startafter the morale-shattering defeats in recent times. "They need abit of insurance by having a good start in the series. They needsomeone to talk to them, to make them realise the circumstancesof the game and boost their morale,” he added.Meanwhile, a keen sense of anticipation is building up in theCaribbean ahead of the series, especially in Guyana and Trinidad& Tobago, where about 45 percent of the population is of Indiandescent.The pitches at most of the Test grounds should be helpful to thetwo Indian spinners, Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh. The WestIndies batsmen will have to put on their dancing shoes if theyare to cope with the Indian spin twins. The Kensington Oval atBarbados, which may lay claim to having the best pitch in thecountry, and the Sabina Park Oval at Jamaica, where the third andfifth Test are to be held, should still favour the quicks.This is where someone like Adam Sanford, who might be the newstar on the West Indies fast bowling horizon, is expected tothrive. He burst onto the scene in this year’s Busta Cup afterencouraging fast-bowling performances for his native Antigua &Barbuda during the Leeward Islands championship last year. He hastaken 37 wickets at 24.24 each.Overall, the series between the two sides should be a veryinteresting one that the West Indies would do well to win andbring some pleasure back to the fans in the Caribbean. If Sanfordis selected and proves his mettle, and the rest of the batsmenrally around Brian Lara, who seems fit to play, then the WestIndies could be more than competitive. They could actuallysurprise all and win.