The recent home performances of the West Indies women and men have heightened expectations of good performances in upcoming away tours–India, Australia (women), South Africa and Australia/New Zealand (ICC ODI World Cup). Additionally, the franchise regional series, which bowls off in November, will also provide an indicator as to whether or not the regional game is on the path to rebounding from its perpetual decline starting in 1995.
The West Indies women's thrashing of New Zealand 4�0 in the ODI series would have come as a surprise even to the most ardent West Indian supporter based on the overall record between both teams. The Merissa Aguilleira team dominated with outstanding performances from a number of players, led by Anisa Mohammed and Deandra Dottin. The wins came against a relatively quiet series for ace player Stephanie Taylor.
The victory over New Zealand (White Ferns) has propelled the West Indies to second position behind Australia (Southern Stars) on the World Championship standing. The West Indies and the Southern Stars meet in November in their leg of the World Championship. Ellyse Perry, Alyssa Healy and Meg Lanning, along with the bouncier and pacier Australian pitches, will test the full repertoire of the West Indians players' skills.
The exceptional performance of the West Indies women against New Zealand should serve as a justification to the West Indies Board to invest more resources in the women's game. The senior regional tournament needs expanding from five matches to at least ten as is being done for the men's game. Additionally, the WICB has to provide greater support for the annual Under-19 Invitational tournament that is staged in Trinidad. Such a move will contribute to overall development where a bigger pool of players will be available for selection to the West Indies team.
The West Indies men embark on their tour of India in October on a good showing in their home series against New Zealand and Bangladesh. Although they lost 2�1 to New Zealand, there were encouraging signs in the performances of Brathwaite, Bravo, Benn, Taylor, Roach and the evergreen Chanderpaul. These performances gelled in the subsequent test series against Bangladesh resulting in a 2�0 win.
However, a postmortem of both home series will show that there is a lot of room for improvement especially in the areas of fielding and batting. Too many catches were spilled which can be very costly against teams such as India and South Africa. The scoring rates were very painful at times which reflected that the batsmen were either unwilling or inept in rotating the strike to ensure scoreboard pressure was kept on the bowlers and fielders. Against quality bowlers such as Kumar, Sharma, Shami, Ashwin and Ojha rotation of strike will be crucial against self-destruction when bowling pressure increases. West Indian batsmen will do well to look at the performances of English batsmen Gary Balance and Joe Root, who scored heavily against the Indian bowlers in their 2014, 3�1 home series win.
India will be coming hard at the West Indies attempting to redeem themselves from the humiliating defeat at the hands of England. Denesh Ramdin will also be cognizant of the poor performance of the West Indies one year ago when they were humiliated by India 2�0, losing both tests inside of three days. The appalling display resulted in the current convener of selectors, Clive Lloyd stating that the then Darren Sammy team "looked drunk" from too much T20 cricket and former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar referring to the team as a "club side" and the worst West Indian team to tour India. Ramdin, his players and the entire management team have to ensure that such a debacle is not repeated as it will severely throwback current efforts to revitalise the game in itself as well as support from fans and potential sponsors.
The revival of West Indies cricket is at watershed moment with the introduction of franchise regional cricket. The agreement between the WICB and WIPA on franchise cricket reinforces the urgent need to invigorate an upswing of regional cricket. One of the outcomes of this approach should be greater levels of professionalism among players, coaches and the overall management of the game in the region.
It is expected that matches will last the duration of the four days with batsmen demonstrating consistency in runs scoring and bowlers using their full range of skills to outfox opposing batsmen. For all of this to take place, it is crucial that good cricket wickets are provided where batsmen and bowlers can produce provided they are prepared to work for their desired objectives–runs or wickets.
It will be foolhardy to expect a complete turnaround of misfortunes with the upcoming tours and the start of franchise regional cricket. However, at the same time it is expected that the evidence of a commitment to improvement must be demonstrated by players, coaches and management.