HAY­DEN COP­PIN

The 11th edi­tion of the Caribbean Pre­mier League end­ed two Sun­days ago with the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors fi­nal­ly and - to their fans and most neu­tral spec­ta­tors - de­serv­ing­ly lift­ing their first crown in their sixth trip to the T20 tour­na­ment’s cli­max, which was fit­ting­ly played in front of their ti­tle starved and rav­en­ous Guyana home fans at the Prov­i­dence Grounds.

Like all ma­jor sport­ing events, but es­pe­cial­ly with crick­et in the Caribbean, arm­chair crit­ics will all be sit­ting down in their var­i­ous cir­cles, bars, bar­ber­shops or what­ev­er groups, to give their opin­ions and post-mortems of the 2023 edi­tion of the tour­na­ment and out­lin­ing ar­eas of fail­ure or suc­cess.

Over­all, this year’s tour­na­ment would have to be giv­en a pass­ing grade, as de­spite the fi­nal it­self be­ing un­der­whelm­ing and an­ti­cli­mac­tic, the lev­el of play through­out was quite high as was the stan­dard of the pitch­es, bowl­ing and bats­man­ship, with the on­ly flaws that can re­al­ly be men­tioned be­ing sub-par catch­ing and at times ques­tion­able um­pir­ing – which for the most part was cor­rect­ed (as in­tend­ed) by the di­rect re­view sys­tem (DRS) and the TV um­pire.

From a West In­di­an per­spec­tive, it was pleas­ing to see two play­ers, in par­tic­u­lar, raise their hands and an­nounce them­selves as po­ten­tial­ly the next in a long line of su­per­stars from the Caribbean who have gone on to glob­al great­ness and suc­cess play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al and fran­chise T20 crick­et – clas­sic Bar­ba­di­an bats­man, Shai Hope and Guyanese fast-bowl­ing all-rounder Ro­mario Shep­herd.

The even­tu­al Most Valu­able Play­er of the en­tire tour­na­ment, Hope emerged as the lead­ing run scor­er with 481 runs at an av­er­age of 53 in his 12 in­nings played, smash­ing his maid­en T20 ton in the process, along with 5 oth­er scores over 50.

De­spite his ob­vi­ous class and styl­ish stroke-mak­ing, es­pe­cial­ly when dri­ving el­e­gant­ly through the off-side, Hope some­what pedes­tri­an scor­ing rate in the short­est in­ter­na­tion­al­ly con­test­ed form of crick­et, was con­sid­ered way too slow and thus he has not been se­lect­ed re­cent­ly in re­gion­al T20 teams, de­spite be­ing the cap­tain of the oth­er white ball ver­sion of the game, ODIs where he is re­gard­ed as one of the top bats­men in the world with 4,940 runs from 113 match­es and the eye-catch­ing av­er­age of 50.40.

It is ob­vi­ous to any­one with even a pass­ing in­ter­est in WI crick­et that Hope is eas­i­ly the best and most com­plete bats­man in the re­gion, yet he has been some­how pi­geon holed in­to just be­ing an ODI play­er and spe­cial­ist.

The re­al­i­ty is that with the cup­boards in the re­gion near­ly bare, the WI can­not af­ford the lux­u­ry of la­belling play­ers and if they them­selves are in­ter­est­ed – as the ev­i­dence sug­gests Hope is in this case – every op­por­tu­ni­ty must be giv­en to our spe­cial­ly gift­ed crick­eters to play in all for­mats of the game.

As the late Sir Ever­ton Weekes and even Sir Vi­vian Richards once fa­mous­ly said, crick­et is crick­et and once a play­er can bat or bowl and have the cor­rect at­ti­tude and in­tel­li­gence, they can adapt their game to suit any for­mat of crick­et.

This state­ment has been proven by many play­ers across the crick­et­ing world with per­haps a won­der­ful ex­am­ple be­ing In­dia’s Vi­rat Kohli who has proven to be amongst the very best in Test crick­et (49.3 ave) ODIs (57.4) and T20Is (52.7).

While there is no doubt that Hope, who start­ed his Test ca­reer by scor­ing a hun­dred in both in­nings against Eng­land - then record - has re­gressed in this for­mat (now av­er­ag­ing 27), his per­for­mance in the just con­clud­ed CPL is tes­ti­mo­ny that he is pre­pared to put in the hard work nec­es­sary to achieve suc­cess.

He is ob­vi­ous­ly stronger and seems to have been hit­ting the gym as there is clear pow­er in his shots, which com­bined with his im­mac­u­late tim­ing, has added six-hit­ting to his ar­se­nal. He has al­so clear­ly worked on cor­rect­ing play­ing on the back foot, which has led to him be­ing bowled/lbw all too of­ten and an­oth­er weak­ness to the fast, short, pitched de­liv­ery (chest/shoul­der high) that was once his un­do­ing, but he is now pulling or hook­ing com­fort­ably.

The se­lec­tors need to un­der­stand that at just 29 years old, Shai may well be the re­al ‘hope’ for our crick­et and in­vest heav­i­ly in his abil­i­ty and clear de­sire to im­prove and per­form, sit down and have the rel­e­vant con­ver­sa­tions with him and plot a path to mak­ing him the Kohli of the West In­dies.

As to Shep­herd, the 28-year-old Guyanese has been around West In­dies crick­et since his ODI de­but in 2019 and he too seems to have been la­belled a white ball spe­cial­ist. Like Hope, it is clear that he has worked hard on his fit­ness and his over­all game and he was a rev­e­la­tion in the CPL where he bowled con­sis­tent­ly in the 140 kph range and trou­bled many bats­men in pick­ing up 12 scalps, with one mem­o­rable spell that comes quick­ly to mind be­ing the over in which he hit Nicholas Pooran on his hel­met, in a par­tic­u­lar­ly quick and vi­cious over, be­fore hav­ing him caught a few balls lat­er. He al­so proved quite de­struc­tive with the bat with his 112 runs com­ing on time­ly and valu­able oc­ca­sions in help­ing GAW over­all’s bat­ting ef­forts.

With the West In­dies sched­uled to host the fi­nals of the ICC T20 World Cup in just over six months, the fans may be feel­ing a lit­tle ex­cit­ed and op­ti­mistic as apart from the pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned duo, sev­er­al oth­er play­ers raised their hands and in­di­cat­ed that they may be ready to take their games to the next lev­el, with rel­a­tive new­com­er, spin­ner Gu­dakesh Motie prov­ing a hand­ful through­out the tour­na­ment for vir­tu­al­ly all bats­men, with his clever vari­a­tions of speed, flight and turn.

Al­though Motie was not se­lect­ed, it was al­so quite pleas­ing to see sev­en West In­di­ans in the fi­nal XI of the Re­pub­lic Bank, CPL Team of the Tour­na­ment a team (All Star), with Hope and Shep­herd be­ing joined by Ja­son Hold­er (16 wick­ets), Bran­don King Pooran (291 runs), Alzarri Joseph (14 wick­ets) and Kieron Pol­lard (215 runs)

What is re­fresh­ing and en­cour­ag­ing about this is that on­ly Pol­lard will be un­avail­able for next year’s WC giv­ing head coach Dar­ren Sam­my and the se­lec­tors a won­der­ful core on which to build. Some names which jump quick­ly to mind would be Shim­ron Het­my­er, Akiel Ho­sein, Keemo Paul, Sher­fane Ruther­ford, Os­hane Thomas and Kea­cy Car­ty, who all showed a glimpse of what could be pos­si­ble, with a bit more con­cen­tra­tion and com­mit­ment.

With a deep and com­pet­i­tive Eng­land squad due in the Caribbean in De­cem­ber for what should be an in­ter­est­ing T20 se­ries, some play­ers who now find them­selves on the fringe af­ter dis­ap­point­ing CPL tour­na­ments, Obed Mc­Coy, Kyle May­ers, Fabi­an Allen and even re­cent­ly-mint­ed cap­tain Rov­man Pow­ell, who had a very dis­ap­point­ing and unin­spir­ing sea­son as cap­tain of the Bar­ba­dos Roy­als, which gave up the most runs in the com­pe­ti­tion and failed to make the play­offs.

What the CPL has proven is that while crowds have been very sparse for match­es or­gan­ised by Crick­et West In­dies, crick­et fans are still will­ing to come out in their num­bers to sup­port and watch well-or­gan­ised, pro­mot­ed and es­pe­cial­ly af­ford­ably-priced crick­et.

By and large, it’s the very same Hope, Pooran, Joseph and Shep­herd who are play­ing, so why would fans sup­port the CPL in every venue, but not CWI?

The board must do an in­tro­spec­tive and un­der­stand that while the brand of West In­dies crick­et is revered, most of this is tied to the glo­ry and per­for­mances of yes­ter­year.

The Board can’t be serv­ing mau­by and charg­ing for cham­pagne, or sar­dines and pric­ing for caviar. The WI team has sim­ply been not very good in the past decade or more and charg­ing ex­or­bi­tant prices to watch a sec­ond-rate team just doesn’t cut it. When the World Cup comes around the Board needs to un­der­stand that 5,000 fans at $200 may be the ex­act same $1 mil­lion, the same can be achieved with 10,000 fans at $100.

The re­al dif­fer­ences are the in­tan­gi­bles like the vibes and at­mos­phere in the venue which makes a hell of a dif­fer­ence on the ‘live’ spec­ta­tors on the ground, the TV au­di­ence and even the play­ers, not to men­tion the ven­dors and con­ces­sion­ers who of­ten de­pend of these games to put a ‘lil’ ex­tra in their pock­ets.

The CWI shouldn’t try to rein­vent the wheel, but take a look at the CPL mod­el and try to adapt their mar­ket­ing mix by find­ing the right com­bi­na­tion of se­lect­ing the right prod­uct (team), giv­ing the tour­na­ment prop­er pro­mo­tion and mak­ing team and play­er mer­chan­dise eas­i­ly avail­able (so­cial and tra­di­tion­al me­dia and out­lets), price the tick­ets rea­son­ably/af­ford­ably and then fi­nal­ly place the tick­ets and games where they are eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble and with­in the reach of the fans and there is lit­tle to no doubt they will re­spond and at­tend the games.

The CPL has been prov­ing this since its in­cep­tion in 2013.