An­dre E Bap­tiste

The West In­dies team is still in neu­tral and too po­lite, but if they don't start well to­day against Aus­tralia in the Sec­ond Test, then some ob­servers would be cor­rect to be­lieve that the late night danc­ing ses­sions of some play­ers at Club 51 De­grees on Fri­day night­in­to Sat­ur­day Morn­ing (fol­low­ing the WIPA Awards cer­e­mo­ny at the Hy­att), in­clud­ing the cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my was not as ben­e­fi­cial as per­haps oth­er­wise thought. If it as­sists our play­ers in danc­ing down the track and us­ing their feet against the Aussies spin­ners, then this was a bril­liant­ly con­ceived plan by West In­di­an coach Otis Gib­son. And while no one will be­grudge a sport­ing per­son­al­i­ty a time to re­lax, when they fail to de­liv­er af­ter be­ing in the pub­lic do­main for a night out less than 48 hours ahead of a match, there will be con­cerns. Aus­tralia will be­lieve they have the edge, af­ter their edgy three-wick­et vic­to­ry in Bar­ba­dos, but it will be in­ter­est­ing to watch the mind­set of the West In­dies team, giv­en the en­cour­ag­ing start that was made in the First Test.

There is a lot of qui­et op­ti­mism sur­round­ing this West In­dies team, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause many be­lieve this is one of the weak­est Aus­tralian teams to vis­it the Caribbean since the Bob­by Simp­son led young­sters in the 1980s. To the unini­ti­at­ed or the un­in­formed, it must be stat­ed that one of the most crit­i­cal ar­eas of im­prove­ment for the West In­dies team will be the open­ing part­ner­ship, as with­out our best open­ing bats­man Christo­pher Gayle, far too of­ten the mid­dle-or­der is con­vert­ed in­to sec­ond tier open­ing bats­men. Some con­sis­ten­cy must be found and in par­tic­u­lar young Adri­an Barath must con­trol his nat­ur­al ag­gres­sion and seek to play longer in­nings, of course if he can re­main fit dur­ing a Test match that will as­sist both his con­fi­dence and his stroke play. As to Kraigg Braith­waite, while he is not en­ter­tain­ing, he does his job and has glue-like at­ti­tude to­wards the play­ing cen­tre and that is wide­ly need­ed in this team, there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that his ar­ray of strokes will im­prove in time.

The weath­er fore­cast­ers in this coun­try have pre­dict­ed a bright and sun­ny day, and that to me is a ma­jor source of con­cern, giv­en their reg­u­lar pen­chant to­wards in­ac­cu­ra­cy. Even giv­en the lat­i­tude of fan­ta­sy, the ef­fect of watch­ing the West In­dies re­bound and shock a con­fi­dent Aus­tralia (which is one as­pect that could be in the West In­dies team favour) would please us all and set up a de­cid­ing last Test, but first things first. The West In­dies have to be more clin­i­cal in their bowl­ing and with De­ven­dra Bishoo look­ing a for­lorn fig­ure at the mo­ment, Shane Shilling­ford may force his way in­to the team. While Fi­del Ed­wards can­not have too poor match­es and should bowl well at the Queens Park Oval. Bat­ting, of course, is faith. You have to fo­cus on each ball, as if it were the very one that could dis­miss you, in or­der to en­sure your dreams of a long and fruit­ful in­nings ma­te­ri­alise. So if you are look­ing for me on Day One, I will be in the Tri­ni Posse sec­tion cel­e­brat­ing its 20 years in crick­et and al­so be­cause it is ex­treme­ly pleas­ing to know that at last some­one can recog­nise the con­tri­bu­tion of that great man and West In­dies/T&T play­er, the late Michael "Joey" Carew.