Vin­ode Mam­chan

For­mer West In­dies open­er and top rat­ed coach Bryan Davis says that the on­ly way out for the West In­dies in their cur­rent predica­ment is hard work.Davis was com­ment­ing af­ter the West In­dies were wal­loped in their lim­it­ed overs match against New Zealand in New Zealand on Tues­day.West In­dies were beat­en by 159 runs af­ter the match was re­duced to 21 overs. The rel­a­tive new­com­er Corey An­der­son blast­ed the fastest ever lim­it­ed overs hun­dred off just 36 balls. An­oth­er NewZealand bats­man Jesse Ry­der al­so hit the sixth fastest ODI cen­tu­ry.Davis said West In­dies went in­to the match men­tal­ly un-pre­pared and it showed in the re­sults."I hear Dwayne Bra­vo say­ing that they were caught off-guard. What is he speak­ing about? Were they in the ho­tel room and some­one just an­nounced to them that they had a match to play?"They lost the game be­cause as West In­di­ans like to do, they were prob­a­bly in the dress­ing room fool­ing around and sky­lark­ing. They were prob­a­bly think­ing that the game would not have been played and when they were told that it was go­ing to be a 21-overs match, they then had no time to men­tal­ly ad­just to match play."They field­ed first prob­a­bly think­ing they would get a run around be­cause they prob­a­bly had no warm-up time and it worked against them."

Davis, who has coached spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine at Queen's Park, said he was against the move to open the bowl­ing with him. "You have Ravi Ram­paul who is one of your bet­ter bowlers in those con­di­tions in any for­mat and he should have opened the bowl­ing with Ja­son Hold­er."Davis not­ed that there was on­ly one way out of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion: "Hard work is the way out of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. I think the prob­lem start­ed be­fore the tour to In­dia, when they went to Or­lan­do for a camp. I was told that this was im­por­tant in team build­ing and bond­ing and all that non­sense."They ac­tu­al­ly left a camp in Bar­ba­dos where they were play­ing crick­et to go to a place with no crick­et and go site see­ing. This is fool­ish­ness. What they should have done is to stay in Bar­ba­dos and play crick­et. What they could have al­so done is to or­gan­ise with the In­di­ans to play some zon­al teams. This would have been ide­al prepa­ra­tions for them be­fore that two-Test se­ries.

"So we went in­to the se­ries un­der-pre­pared and were ham­mered in­side three days in both Tests and this would have killed off the con­fi­dence in the play­ers. The se­lec­tors, then sent the same beat­en team to New Zealand to play in to­tal­ly op­po­site con­di­tions and ex­pect­ed them to do well. There was no way that team was go­ing to win match­es in New Zealand."What is re­quired now is for the play­ers to go back to the nets and work for long hours. I be­lieve in play­ing a lot of crick­et. I am one who still thinks that prac­tice makes per­fect. When you have long prac­tice ses­sions, you gain con­fi­dence, sta­mi­na, men­tal tough­ness and bond­ing as well. What is need­ed is for the coach to take these men in­to the nets and let them bat and bowl for long hours and al­so praise them a lot. This is a ma­jor con­fi­dence thing, so this is what is re­quired."Davis con­tin­ued :"How­ev­er, I don't know who will do it be­cause I don't think that coach Ot­tis Gib­son can do it. Even the pres­i­dent of the WICB spoke of the val­ue of the camp in Or­lan­do. Lis­ten here, a straight bat back in 1930, is still a straight bat, and they still have to use the same 22 yards to bowl. So what is the big idea with all this fool­ish­ness now?"