Col­in EH Croft

Con­trary to ob­tuse thoughts, every­thing does start at the be­gin­ning. That de­bil­i­tat­ing three-day loss by West In­dies in Test No 1 to Aus­tralia in Do­mini­ca last Fri­day was pre­scribed by the fi­nal WI XI se­lect­ed be­fore a ball was bowled.De­spite spir­it­ed bat­ting from debu­tant Shane Dowrich and Mar­lon Samuels in WI's 2nd in­nings, one par­tic­u­lar se­lec­tion made WI in­ca­pable of win­ning No 1.

Re­mem­ber­ing that "com­mon sense is not al­ways com­mon", why did WI se­lec­tors Clive Lloyd, Court­ney Walsh, El­dine Bap­tiste and Court­ney Browne pick a third fast bowler, Shan­non Gabriel, in­stead of what was need­ed on that well-known Warn­er Park spin­ner-friend­ly pitch, a sec­ond full-fledged spin­ner in left-arm or­tho­dox Veerasam­my Per­maul?

Play­ing to your strength

Could it have been that Lloyd; 110 Tests; who cap­tained a world-beat­ing team with great fast bowlers, or Walsh; 132 Tests, one of those greats, or Bap­tiste; 10 Tests; an­oth­er faster bowler un­der Lloyd's cap­tain­cy, or Browne; 20 Tests; who was poor to spin any­way as a wick­et-keep­er, still do not know, ap­pre­ci­ate or un­der­stand what is meant by "us­ing hors­es for cours­es"?

Even with fast bowl­ing lega­cies, WI present se­lec­tors should have known the his­to­ry of spin at Wind­sor Park. That blink­ered omis­sion of Per­maul caused WI to lose Test No 1.WI's present faster bowlers Gabriel, Ja­son Hold­er and Jerome Tay­lor do not com­pare fa­vor­ably to Aussie fast-men Mitchell John­son, Mitchell Starc and Josh Ha­zle­wood.

Every­thing starts at the be­gin­ning, so due to four decades of in­volve­ment in sev­er­al as­pects of avi­a­tion, I most­ly re­fer to that in­dus­try for ex­am­ples for re­al life and sports too.

Ex­pe­ri­ence v com­mon sense

Nine­teen years ago; May 1996; a com­mer­cial flight, Val­u­Jet Flight 592, a Mc Don­nell-Dou­glas DC-9, burned then crashed in­to the Flori­da Ever­glades rel­a­tive­ly close to Mi­a­mi In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, ten min­utes af­ter take-off, killing all 110 per­sons aboard. That ac­ci­dent could eas­i­ly have been avoid­ed too, but that flight was doomed even be­fore it left the park­ing gate.

There was noth­ing that the two ex­pe­ri­enced cock­pit crew, with a com­bined near­ly 21,000 fly­ing hours be­tween them, could have done to save them­selves and pas­sen­gers, as un­known to them, the ground han­dlers had packed il­le­gal-to-car­ry haz­ardous ma­te­ri­als in­to bag­gage holds.Once air­borne, the 'Haz­mat' ig­nit­ed. That was that!

Last week, Wind­sor Park was host­ing on­ly its fourth Test over­all, hav­ing host­ed In­dia in 2011, Aus­tralia in 2012 and Zim­bab­we in 2013. Do­mini­ca's first ever Test was drawn, but the lat­ter two were won by dead­ly spin bowl­ing from Aus­tralia and WI.

Spin works on right pitch

In 2012, with Shiv Chan­der­paul aboard–he made two half cen­turies–Aus­tralia beat WI by sev­en­ty-five runs, cour­tesy of left-arm spin­ner and cap­tain Michael Clarke's sec­ond in­nings 5 for 86, cou­pled with off-spin­ner Nathan Lyons' match fig­ures 7-156. Per­maul is a much bet­ter spin­ner than Clarke!

Do­mini­can WI off-spin­ner Shane Shilling­ford had ex­cel­lent match-fig­ures then too; 81.5-16-219-10; while WI's part-time off-spin­ner Nars­ingh De­onar­ine al­so had three wick­ets.So, be­tween Lyons, Clarke, De­onar­ine, Shilling­ford and David Warn­er, who had 1-21 with oc­ca­sion­al leg-breaks, spin bowl­ing ac­count­ed for 26 of 40 wick­ets tak­en in that game!

When WI beat Zim­bab­we in 2013 by an in­nings and six­ty-five runs, Shilling­ford had even more im­pres­sive match-fig­ures with his off-breaks and 'doos­ras'; 36.5-8-93-10. Mar­lon Samuels' off-breaks con­tributed well too; match-fig­ures 18.2-3-50-6.Fur­ther, Zim­bab­we's off-spin­ner Pros­per Ut­seya and right-arm leg-spin­ner Graeme Cre­mer, ala Dav­en­dra Bishoo, took five of eight WI wick­ets to fall in that game.

So, in the last Test at Wind­sor Park be­fore last week, twen­ty-one of twen­ty-eight wick­ets to fall were tak­en by spin bowl­ing!

Pac­er Gabriel v spin­ner Per­maul

How could present WI's se­lec­tors not know these facts or did they have yet an­oth­er agen­da? Were Lloyd and Com­pa­ny over-rid­den by cap­tain De­nesh Ramdin and coach Philip Sim­mons, both of T&T, in se­lect­ing T&T na­tive Gabriel in­stead of Per­maul, who, in­ci­den­tal­ly, was WICB's 2015 four-day First-Class com­pe­ti­tion's lead­ing wick­et-tak­er with 69 wick­ets?

Does WI's se­lec­tion com­mit­tee have some­thing else against Per­maul, as he was al­so over­looked in re­cent World Cup 2015, for Naki­ta Miller, and was on­ly be­lat­ed­ly called up against Eng­land too?Per­maul's omis­sion was cost­ly to WI, es­pe­cial­ly when the on­ly front-line spin­ner, Bishoo, bowled beau­ti­ful­ly for 6-80 from 33 tan­ta­liz­ing but tir­ing overs.

Per­maul al­so bats in­fi­nite­ly bet­ter than Gabriel. What is go­ing on here? Bishoo need­ed Per­maul's part­ner­ship when Aus­tralia were de­plet­ed to 178-8 in 1st in­nings, af­ter WI had made a pal­try 148. That small lead was ex­tend­ed to 170 runs by Adam Vo­ges' tremen­dous ini­tial Test in­nings; 130 not out, with the help of tail-en­ders!

WI bat­ting line-up be­fore Test No 1 v Aus­tralia has on­ly two bats­men, Dar­ren Bra­vo; 43.18; and Jer­maine Black­wood; 50.36; with bat­ting av­er­ages bet­ter than 40 runs per in­nings, so WI could not have hoped to fright­en Aus­tralia with bat­ting pow­er.There­fore, the on­ly way WI could have won Test No. 1 would have been to "bowl them out"; dis­miss Aus­tralia twice, but WI did not have the bowl­ing per­son­nel to ac­com­plish such!

Maybe WICB Pres­i­dent Dave Cameron will ad­dress these con­cerns in his next "Town-Hall" meet­ing in Guyana soon, but much of this makes no sense at all, at least not to me.