Alvin?Corneal

While we may think that any form of analy­sis on the per­for­mances of the first Test against Eng­land, there are clear­ly some es­sen­tial facts which should be con­sid­ered.No one ex­pects to judge the new coach on the ini­tial per­for­mance of his team, al­though I am pre­pared to give Phil Sim­mons some cred­it for the ap­pli­ca­tion of the young bats­men Braith­wait­he, Black­w­wod and Hold­er.

My first ob­ser­va­tion was the ac­cu­ra­cy of our three fast bowlers from as ear­ly as the first test match. This could be the in­for­ma­tion shared with them by Curt­ly Am­brose and of course the val­ue of start­ing the se­ries with qual­i­ty bowl­ing.

Maybe in hind­sight, I would men­tion to the se­lec­tors that our his­to­ry of play­ing against Eng­land in the Caribbean should have en­dorsed a se­lec­tion of Bishoo, the tal­ent­ed wrist spin­ner in­stead of Sulie­man Benn whose de­liv­er­ies are more suit­ed to keep runs down rather than tak­ing wick­ets.

Some of us were around long enough to re­mem­ber the ef­fec­tive­ness of spin­ners like Wil­fred Fer­gu­son in the fifties, Willie Ro­driguez in the six­ties when Boy­cott and com­pa­ny failed to read his spin and lost their wick­ets, Shane Warne in the more re­cent times.

There is rea­son for Eng­land's fail­ure to cope with wrist spin. First­ly, their cli­mat­ic con­di­tions and the reg­u­lar bouts of mois­ture dur­ing their sea­son have not pro­duced wrist spin­ners of any qual­i­ty, nor have they al­lowed the bats­men to use their feet to smoth­er spin on the wick­ets.They thrive on the likes of Tit­mus, Illing­worth, David Allen and Tony Lock, all or­tho­dox spin­ners, who may well have al­lowed the Eng­lish bat­ters an ad­e­quate for­mu­la to deal with the likes of Benn and Miller.

Hav­ing looked su­per­fi­cial­ly at the first game, my at­ten­tion was fo­cused up­on the age of the cho­sen play­ers in con­junc­tion with their present per­for­mances.For many a year, we en­joyed the dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach of Chan­der­paul with his un­usu­al, but suc­cess­ful dis­play of bats­man­ship, which brought him among the top of the world's out­stand­ing bats­men.

To­day, the dap­per lit­tle 42 year old Guyanese seems to have lost his rhythm which had pro­duced the pre­ci­sion of a well-oiled stroke play­ing ma­chine even though the strength of his com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion re­mains, but un­for­tu­nate­ly with­out his agili­ty and 20/20 vi­sion for which he was gift­ed.

I be­lieve that the sig­nal for the twi­light zone is ob­vi­ous in Chan­ders, es­pe­cial­ly when he has to spend a day and a half in 33 per cent Cel­sius heat pri­or to tak­ing his turn at the crease.

His first 23 runs were scored in 80 balls, a sim­i­lar rate to his bat­ting part­ner Kraig Braith­wait­he, a young­ster whose ar­ray of shots are yet to be seen, de­spite his good scores.Then there are the now es­tab­lished vet­er­ans.Mar­lon Samuel, whose in­abil­i­ty to re­tain the con­sis­ten­cy even on a flat, docile wick­et and against on­ly three re­al qual­i­ty bowlers in An­der­son, Jor­dan and Tred­well ap­pears to be less­en­ing.

Some diehards may wish to point fin­gers at the more youth­ful bat­ters like Dar­ren Bra­vo and De­nesh Ramdin, both of whom are in the prime of their ca­reers.Clear­ly, the team needs the re­al­i­ty of play­ers, who are de­scribed as com­pe­tent, to be con­sis­tent as well. And, the same can be said about our bowlers.

The fact that we have come away with a draw is com­mend­able as Eng­land's bowl­ing is high­ly ranked in the world.Can I humbly sug­gest that our se­lec­tors view the av­er­age age of our team and re­late it to the amount of crick­et of all sorts which they play?Then view the se­ri­ous phys­i­cal and men­tal tough­ness to en­dure dur­ing some very hot long days which would need strength, en­durance, and ex­cel­lent pow­ers of con­cen­tra­tion for suc­cess.

With­out too much rest time for the sec­ond Test, we shall go again and take a clos­er look at the lot in or­der to recog­nise the true facts of the strengths of our team.I ac­cept that there is an ef­fort to reach the learn­ing curve but words alone will not achieve that goal.