Tony Fras­er

Un­doubt­ed­ly the West In­dies are a less trou­bled team than has been the case in the re­cent past with play­ers bond­ing to im­press them­selves on the op­po­si­tion. From what can be dis­cerned from be­yond the bound­ary, coach Ot­tis Gib­son and cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my must be giv­en cred­it for bring­ing the play­ers to­geth­er and in­fus­ing them with a sense of pur­pose.

Ke­mar Roach says Gib­son is a great coach and cred­its him for the re­newed en­er­gy and in­tel­li­gence of his bowl­ing, the young Bar­ba­di­an fast bowler hav­ing tak­en 19 wick­ets in the se­ries against Aus­tralia. The en­thu­si­asm on the field, the ob­vi­ous grav­i­ta­tion to Sam­my, a play­er of no con­sid­er­able abil­i­ty, but one who can be re­lied on for be­ing ready to put his life on the line for the team, are in­di­ca­tions that the WI are mov­ing the bick­er­ing and in­fight­ing so ob­vi­ous for al­most two decades.

It is a good start af­ter 20 years in the crick­et­ing wilder­ness dur­ing which time it seemed we be­longed in the last grade of Test-play­ing na­tions along­side Bangladesh and Zim­bab­we. But through­out the ODIs, the Twen­ty20 scream­ers and more so in the Test se­ries, the clas­si­cal prob­lem of this pe­ri­od of drought was dem-on­strat­ed for all to see: on every oc­ca­sion that the Aus­tralians ex­ert­ed pres­sure and when the WI faced a chal­lenge, in­clud­ing how to win a game from a po­si­tion of strength, they fell apart as a unit, even seem­ing to be with­out a thought about what are the best op­tions.

This men­tal de­fi­cien­cy and con­fused state were most pro­nounced in the bat­ting, the young bats­men un­able to calm­ly face dif­fi­cult chal­lenges with­out seek­ing to re­sort to des­per­ate­ly ner­vous stroke­play, want­i­ng to ex­tri­cate them­selves from a sit­u­a­tion by a voop.

Carl­ton Baugh, Ravi Ram­paul, Sam­my to some ex­tent, and the fee­ble sur­ren­der of the top or­der, in­clu­sive of Bra­vo's in­de­ter­mi­nate stab at a wide de­liv­ery, were all on dis­play in the fi­nal in­nings of the se­ries as il­lus­tra­tive of the char­ac­ter flaw. But aim­less bowl­ing, de­fen­sive cap­tain­cy and at times sub-stan­dard field­ing al­so neu­tralised the West In­dies ef­fort on every oc­ca­sion that the bowlers had gone through the top crust of the Aus­tralian bat­ting-sure­ly the weak­est Aussie bat­ting line-up to ever vis­it the Caribbean.

On those oc­ca­sions, the cap­tain and his team did not have the ca­pac­i­ty, the ag­gres­sion, the fire-pow­er nor the guile to fin­ish the job. In the Do­mini­ca Test, af­ter re­duc­ing the Aussies to 169 for 7, the West In­di­ans be­came help­less as the Aus­tralian late or­der moved the score to 328 all out. In the Bar­ba­dos Test, the WI had them vul­ner­a­ble at 250 for 7; men­tal in­ca­pac­i­ty and the lack of a pos­i­tive strat­e­gy in the field al­lowed the Aus­tralians to re­vive suf­fi­cient­ly to de­clare at 406, 43 runs short of the West In­dies first in­nings (449).

The Aus­tralian re­vival and de­c­la­ra­tion un­der­mined WI con­fi­dence, the bats­men col­laps­ing in a heap in their sec­ond in­nings for 148, giv­ing the Aussies a mere 191 to win. For more than a decade, this col­umn has been point­ing out the ob­vi­ous: one, the con­tem­po­rary play­ers do not have the psy­cho­log­i­cal foun­da­tion, do not pos­sess a strength of cul­ture and be­lief in them­selves and civil­i­sa­tion to con­quer teams such as Aus­tralia, Eng­land, In­dia, South Africa and Pak­istan.

I have ad­vo­cat­ed not mere­ly the per­ma­nent at­tach­ment of Dr Ru­di Web­ster (team psy­chol­o­gist, "head" coach, what­ev­er the ap­pro­pri­ate ti­tle) to the team, but the cre­ation of a cul­tur­al ma­trix in which the WICB should in­sert the play­ers to de­vel­op the ca­pac­i­ty re­quired.

The re­al­i­ty of Caribbean so­ci­ety to­day is that young men in large num­bers have and con­tin­ue to "drop out;" they have be­come en­meshed in the gang cul­ture, are both de­pen­dent and abu­sive of women; they are a de­cid­ed mi­nor­i­ty amongst achiev­ers; they have re­lin­quished lead­er­ship in re­li­gious and com­mu­ni­ty groups, many are mere­ly in­ter­est­ed in "bling."

It should there­fore be self-ev­i­dent that young men are the ones in great­est need of so­cial re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion if they are to demon­strate char­ac­ter, cre­ativ­i­ty and re­silience on the cric-ket field. But then the self-doubt and lack of ini­tia­tive have been most ap­par­ent in de­ci­sions of the West In­dies Crick­et Board go­ing back 25 years and more.

It is the board which turned its back on over 80 years of crick­et­ing glo­ry and tra­di­tion when it sneaked-off to Aus­tralia to find the so­lu­tion to our prob­lems when the Lloyd/Rich-ards era came to an end. In­deed, dur­ing the hal­cy­on pe­ri­od of WI crick­et, suc­ces­sive boards did not un­der­stand the fac­tors which were re­spon­si­ble for the most com­mand­ing dom­i­nance by any crick­et­ing na­tion and so were un­able to pre­pare for suc­ces­sion.

The sec­ond de­fi­cien­cy dis­played against the Aus­tralians was the short­age of out­stand­ing nat­ur­al tal­ent and skill, es­pe­cial­ly amongst the bats­men. Most of the young play­ers are not up to the Test lev­el. Bra­vo, the ex­cep­tion in abil­i­ty, too of­ten suc­cumbed to men­tal weak­ness. The no­table and much com­ment­ed up­on ex­cep­tion in the West In­di­an team was Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul.

• To be con­tin­ued