Alvin Corneal

We all were hop­ing for vic­to­ries in or­der to pro­vide the ev­i­dence that this lit­tle twin is­land state in the south­ern Caribbean can rise to unimag­in­able heights, even in the midst of the vast ma­jor­i­ty of high­ly paid op­po­nents in the Twen­ty20 (T20) Cham­pi­ons League com­pe­ti­tion. The taste of suc­cess in the play­offs to qual­i­fy for a place in the big tour­na­ment may have pre­pared our play­ers men­tal­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly fo­cussed in a man­ner that made them ready for the high­ly fi­nan­cial tour­na­ment. It was al­ways ap­par­ent to me that this short ver­sion of the game has been de­signed to bring out the best in play­ers, es­pe­cial­ly those who viewed the pay pack­ets as just re­ward for their hard work.

The chal­lenge to play at their very best was note­wor­thy, but this could on­ly be achieved when play­ers re­late the­o­ret­i­cal­ly to the task of mak­ing sen­si­ble ad­just­ments in this type of game. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, these changes are not eas­i­ly ap­plied un­less there is to­tal un­der­stand­ing of what it takes to be as ef­fi­cient in T20 as it is in an ODI or a Four Day match. It was easy to award full marks to this team, whose col­lec­tive ef­forts were far more su­pe­ri­or than most re­cent na­tion­al teams in any sport. Skip­per Daren Gan­ga can take a bow for hav­ing brought the play­ers to this lev­el of good team spir­it on (and off) the field. They chased the balls down to the bound­ary as if life de­pend­ed up­on whether they suc­ceed­ed in re­duc­ing the num­ber of runs scored.

Our bowlers have proven that they can dis­miss the op­po­si­tion, so long as the bats­men can put some runs on the book in or­der to pro­vide some lee­way for them to do same. All of Ravi Ram­paul, Samuel Badree, Kevon Coop­er, Sher­win Gan­ga and Sunil Nar­ine could hard­ly have bowled more in­tel­li­gent­ly, leav­ing space for com­pli­ments to­wards the team ef­fort. Field­ing, which seemed to have elud­ed the grasp of the pre­dom­i­nant­ly av­er­age qual­i­ty field­ers and catch­ers when in the field, had been an im­prove­ment. And while hard work was tak­ing place with these two ar­eas of the game, the one which was left for im­prove­ment, ap­peared on­ly to be in the bat­ting.

Win­ning the toss al­lowed the cap­tain to make cru­cial de­ci­sions as to whether to bat or field first, which can of­ten de­cide the di­rec­tion the game can go. By now, the coach­es must have stud­ied about strat­e­gy as to the bats­men, each hav­ing strict in­struc­tions from the team room each guid­ed by in­struc­tions to ob­tain a sense of build­ing a game plan to chase the score made by their op­po­nents. Per­son­al­ly, it is my hum­ble be­lief that the bat­ting or­der need­ed to have changed from time to time, as their scores were any­thing but sat­is­fac­to­ry. For me, the pres­ence of Adri­an Bharath as an open­er in this short ver­sion, can be the recipe for such a young and tal­ent­ed play­er. In a pres­sured sit­u­a­tion, the ex­huber­ance, ag­gres­sion and ap­pli­ca­tion when at the crease, is more dif­fi­cult than it ap­pears.

Bat­ting in a clin­i­cal­ly tech­ni­cal mode does not come with­out a clear un­der­stand­ing of analy­sis, where the de­vel­op­ment process must still be the ul­ti­mate goal. Swip­ing and play­ing high risks pre­ced­ed by in­ad­e­quate foot move­ment and prepar­ing for a ball bash­ing ef­fort, need­ed to be non ex­is­tent in the ear­ly stages of an in­ning. But quick con­sol­i­da­tion, as­sess­ment of the pitch, the bowlers and re­call­ing the ar­eas which poor field­ers can be cap­i­talised up­on, has brought much more suc­cess to op­pos­ing bats­men than our cav­a­lier type ad­ven­tur­ous stroke­play, most times pre­med­i­tat­ed and even­tu­al­ly dis­missed for pal­try scores. We of­ten de­scribe our se­lect­ed bats­men as all be­ing very com­pe­tent, yet still, they are fail­ing to sup­ply con­sis­tent­ly good scores and get­ting dis­missed through some of the most ir­ri­ta­ble de­ci­sions.

De­spite my dis­ap­point­ment bor­der­ing on dis­gust, my heart still goes out to these play­ers who were good enough to turn any dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions in­to a de­cent form of com­pet­i­tive­ness, and lit­er­al­ly caused the fans to get ready for some ex­cit­ing vic­to­ries. We were twice un­suc­cess­ful through our own fault, as a re­sult of im­ma­tu­ri­ty and mis­judged pe­ri­ods of field plac­ing. My con­so­la­tion for our na­tion­al team is the fact that we use the play­ers we have at home, while all the rich teams are busy in pre­sea­son ac­tiv­i­ty as they go in search of the stars from dif­fer­ent coun­tries with pock­ets filled with mon­ey. They even pur­chased our own play­ers to op­pose our team, and throw some lev­el of psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­cord among our coun­try­men.

The up­side of these per­for­mances hap­pen to be the ap­pli­ca­tion, at­ti­tude, and fight­ing spir­it demon­strat­ed by our play­ers amidst mil­lions of wit­ness­es world­wide. Vic­to­ry is not al­ways re­mem­bered sim­ply for the fi­nal re­sult but main­ly for the ex­tra­or­di­nary char­ac­ter­is­tics of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and com­mit­ment to du­ties. We may have lost two close match­es but we have gained the re­spect of the sport­ing world. It is not fin­ished, guys. Let us see this ef­fort through­out this tour­na­ment with sim­i­lar re­solve. This coun­try is al­ready proud of what we saw and will cher­ish just a twist in the fi­nal re­sult, even with some luck.