Mike Brear­ley, the leg­endary Eng­lish crick­et cap­tain, wrote a book called The Art of Cap­tain­cy say­ing, “In crick­et, the role of the cap­tain has been con­sis­tent­ly un­der-rat­ed in re­cent years. In a time where sta­tis­tics are the fash­ion, the per­for­mance of bats­men and bowlers can read­i­ly be pre­sent­ed in terms of av­er­ages where­as the con­tri­bu­tion of the cap­tain is, by con­trast, hard­er to as­sess. But in crick­et more than any oth­er sport the role of the leader is cru­cial.”

No truer words many in the Caribbean will agree with, giv­en the cap­tains that we have en­deared for the last four to five years in par­tic­u­lar, from Ja­son Hold­er to his deputy Kraigg Braith­waite and then to T20 cap­tain Car­los Braith­waite, all three have giv­en of their best but have not been good enough. Hold­er has re­tained his place quite shock­ing­ly as West In­dies test cap­tain, de­spite his emp­ty shell of a cap­tain­cy and the dis­mal track record that keeps him com­pa­ny at night. So the an­nounce­ment fi­nal­ly that the man wide­ly re­gard­ed as the best cap­tain in the re­gion Kieron Pol­lard (who has even cap­tained IPL cham­pi­ons Mum­bai In­di­ans) was giv­en the job in all forms of white ball crick­et

For­mer Eng­land cap­tain and high­ly re­spect­ed crick­et broad­cast­er Michael Ather­ton in 2018 wrote on Brear­ley’s book, “I like the sto­ry be­cause of its in­fer­ence that a crick­et dress­ing room is full of dam­aged types — or, if not dam­aged, then enough of the broad spec­trum of hu­man­i­ty to in­ter­est the most cu­ri­ous of ob­servers. A team is made up of all sorts: the con­fi­dent, the in­se­cure, the ex­u­ber­ant, the in­tro­vert­ed and the con­tent, as well as the dam­aged…”

One would hope that a lot of the parochial per­sons in­volved in­side and out­side of West In­dies crick­et would lis­ten to those words, be­cause they es­pe­cial­ly de­scribe the role of a West In­di­an cap­tain hav­ing to man­age cul­tur­al traits of per­sons from Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, An­tigua, St Kitts/Nevis, St Lu­cia, Trinidad and To­ba­go, St Vin­cent, Guyana, Grena­da and many oth­ers at var­i­ous times. And yes, there are many who come in­to West In­dies crick­et con­fi­dent of suc­cess but un­for­tu­nate­ly with­out the ex­pe­ri­ence at the high­est lev­el be­cause of the state of our four-day re­gion­al tour­na­ment.

Thank­ful­ly, many of our best play­ers have been able to ply their trade in T20 leagues and among some of the best play­ers in the world and there­fore gain an op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet, talk and un­der­stand a lot more crick­et habits and learn some tricks of the trade as well. Less our el­der states­men for­get, in the good old days when West In­dies crick­et was at its best, all our play­ers were in­volved in coun­ty crick­et. There­fore, one can watch and un­der­stand just why we are so good in T20 crick­et be­cause of ex­po­sure. And now that the myth that T20 play­ers are not test play­ers has been thrown out the door de­fin­i­tive­ly by West In­dies man­age­ment, hope springs eter­nal of a new be­gin­ning and new re­solve un­der CWI pres­i­dent Ricky Sker­ritt and vice pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low.

Brear­ley has al­ways be­lieved the psy­chol­o­gy of the game to be vi­tal. “Crick­et is a psy­cho­log­i­cal game — a lot goes on in the head in terms, for ex­am­ple, of shrewd­ness, re­silience, bluff, in­di­vid­u­al­ism and team spir­it,” he says. “Cap­tain­ing calls for a down-to-earth sense of what makes play­ers tick, both to help get the best out of one’s own team and to probe the weak­ness of the op­po­si­tion. Peo­ple ask me if psy­chol­o­gy helped me in this role. It did, but the re­verse ap­plied equal­ly: crick­et helped me to be more psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly aware.”

And this is what Pol­lard brings to the ta­ble. He un­der­stands the mind games, the on-the-field ag­gres­sion and tough­ness. Play­ers will know he will stand up for them, just as much as he will ad­mon­ish them for slack­ness or poor at­ti­tude. When you look at the man and talk to all the play­ers who have played with or un­der him, there is a clear feel­ing of trust and that is es­sen­tial. Pol­lard, to his cred­it (and maybe at times to his per­son­al detri­ment in terms of av­er­ages), has al­ways put the team first in what­ev­er for­mat he plays in. The uni­ty in a team is crit­i­cal, it is not the on­ly guar­an­tee to suc­cess, but when any of us are in a com­fort­able en­vi­ron­ment, we all work bet­ter and ul­ti­mate­ly the or­gan­i­sa­tion and in this case, West In­dies crick­et, will ben­e­fit.

So while Pol­lard should not ex­pect the sup­port of all in the re­gion, let us hope that those who want him to fail are in the mi­nor­i­ty. I have gath­ered that some in Bar­ba­dos are up­set at the re­moval of whom they con­sid­er to be “their men” at the head of West In­dies crick­et, but alas, hope­ful­ly, such my­opic think­ing where it ex­ists any­where will soon be cor­rect­ed by at­ti­tu­di­nal change and even­tu­al­ly re­sults. Be­cause af­ter all, every­one should be mea­sured on that and not who likes who, or who is obe­di­ent and says yes to every­thing to keep their job. That sort of sit­u­a­tion leads to bad re­sults and fail­ure in the short and long term.

Sup­port Kieron… Sup­port Kieron… must be the watch­words go­ing for­ward, he is tru­ly one of us!