Tony Fras­er

Suc­cess in the T20 for­mat is not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­ferred to Test crick­et; in fact it will be not even be eas­i­ly repli­cat­ed at the ODI lev­el.

How­ev­er, the dis­plays of men­tal tough­ness, be­lief in self, the very ap­par­ent uni­ty of the team, the de­sire to win, the pow­er of the taste of vic­to­ry and its po­ten­tial to linger long in the palate, forc­ing the in­di­vid­ual in­to habit-form­ing ways, are el­e­ments which the West In­dies T20 team can car­ry in­to the longer more de­mand­ing for­mats of the game.

So too is there em­pow­er­ment in the ac­knowl­edge­ment by a num­ber of the play­ers of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty they have to the West In­di­an peo­ples of the present, past and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. "West In­di­ans crowd­ing to Tests bring with them the whole past-his­to­ry and the fu­ture hopes of the is­lands," stat­ed the fa­ther of West In­di­an crick­et writ­ing and much else, CLR James.

"This is not just crick­et, this thing goes be­yond the bound­ary, It is up to you and me to make sure they fail, Soon we must take a side or be lost in the rub­ble in a di­vid­ed world that don't need is­lands no more...."

That is how David Rud­der up­dat­ed James' un­der­stand­ing of what it means to the peo­ple of the West In­dies for our crick­et team to per­form with dis­tinc­tion on the world stage; the biggest in­ter­na­tion­al stage up­on which West In­di­ans, with a sense of pow­er and au­thor­i­ty and a rich his­to­ry of achieve­ment, rep­re­sent them­selves to the world.

Not on­ly have the West In­dies dom­i­nat­ed the game in dif­fer­ent epochs of time, but we have rev­o­lu­tionised how crick­et is played and brought our own style to the game. It is a style which the world craves, even if at times grudg­ing­ly. The bats­men, the field­s­men and the bowlers at vary­ing lev­els of ac­com­plish­ment made us once again able to hold our heads high af­ter al­most two decades of be­ing con­sid­ered sec­ond-raters.

In the semi­fi­nal against Aus­tralia, the in­ven­tive mind of the West In­di­an shot-mak­ers, the rhythm and tim­ing of the bats­men to launch the white ball in­to the night sky, the ath­leti­cism and sure-hand­ed­ness of the field­s­men, the pow­er and ac­cu­ra­cy of the throw­ing, best ex­em­pli­fied by Dwayne Smith's di­rect hit and the ac­cu­ra­cy of the throw by the oth­er Dwayne (Bra­vo, Bra­vo) and don't for­get Sunil Nar­ine's (the con­tem­pla­tive one) flour­ish with which he crashed his hands in­to the stumps while watch­ing the bats­man fight for his life, were all vin­tage West In­di­an char­ac­ter­is­tics brought to this pre­vi­ous­ly se­date Eng­lish sum­mer's game.

Be­fore the Aus­tralian bats­men faced a ball a sig­nif­i­cant act was played out when Mar­lon Samuels re­spond­ed in kind to what was ob­vi­ous­ly an act of provo­ca­tion by David Warn­er. Ever ready for com­bat, Samuels gave more than he got. Warn­er was rat­tled af­ter the ex­change; he was bowled be­fore he could re­gain com­po­sure.

That was a demon­stra­tion of spine. It was an in­di­ca­tion by Samuels that there would be no men­tal dis­in­te­gra­tion by the WI in the face of well-known Aus­tralian bul­ly­ing and ug­ly sledg­ing.

But the even greater dis­play of fo­cused and pos­i­tive tem­pera­ment by the team came against Sri Lan­ka. The West In­di­an bats­men were re­strict­ed to what was noth­ing more than a low av­er­age score; but the bowlers and field­s­men ap­plied them­selves, be­lieved in their ca­pac­i­ty and en­forced strate­gic pres­sure to the Sri Lankan bats­men.

When Nuwan Ku­lasekara be­gan tak­ing Ram­paul apart, threat­en­ing to bring Sri Lan­ka back in­to the game, Chris Gayle put his arm around the bowler's shoul­der to set­tle him and so dis­played the new Gayle, the ma­ture Pe­ter Pan of the WI team.

Sam­my will nev­er be a Wor­rell, Sobers or Lloyd, what he match­es them in is in West In­di­an­ness and com­mit­ment to the team. When asked about wide­spread crit­i­cism against him, he put him­self and the crit­i­cism in­to per­spec­tive: "If they crit­i­cised Je­sus Christ, then who is Dar­ren Sam­my." It was a glimpse of a big man able to take it on the jaw and roll with it.

Con­tin­u­ing dis­plays of ma­tu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing com­ing to un­der­stand them­selves and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties they have to West In­di­an peo­ples, Gayle and Samuels showed their col­leagues what it takes. Bra­vo, Pol­lard and bowlers Nar­ine, Badree and Ram­paul demon­strat­ed what they are ca­pa­ble of, even if the two all-rounders need­ed greater con­sis­ten­cy.

These dis­plays, grow­ing in­to char­ac­ter­is­tics, were ev­i­dent in the T20 ICC tour­na­ment and in­di­cate that West In­dies are on the verge of pos­si­bil­i­ties. But it must be clear that trans­fer­ring the men­tal el­e­ments of suc­cess and the abil­i­ties dis­played with bat and ball will not be­come au­to­mat­ic; much work is left to be done.