There are many sporting events taking place right now. Also happening simultaneously is the usual maladministration right here in T&T; so much so that one is never short of topics to write about. But how could I not share with you my thoughts on the last two performances of the West Indies team in the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup?
How do we start describing the efforts (or lack thereof) against England and Bangladesh? I must admit that I stupidly thought we would have given a good account of ourselves against England; not necessarily win, but at least fight them down to the wire. For the Bangladesh match, I felt that in spite of the last few ODI's against them, we would come out of the encounter victorious.
If the West Indies were a horse vs England, the trainer would have been disappointed as the West Indies never raised a gallop. The day following the loss, the team was torn apart by the English media. Headlines screamed, “It's apocalypse now for Woeful Windies,” England defeat poor West Indies”, “England defeat hapless Windies”. In one particular article, it referred to, “a bankrupt West Indies performance unravelled like a labrador puppy trailing toilet paper through the house”. It was embarrassing to say the very least.
We just about scraped to 212 thanks to another wonderful knock by Nicholas Pooran - this time 63 and 39 by Shimron Hetmyer. It was never going to be enough but at least we could have made life difficult for the English. Their opener, Jason Roy, tore his hamstring while in the field so it meant they had to use a makeshift opener. Captain Eoin Morgan left the field with back spasms and he would have been batting down the order and only in the case of an emergency. Surely our boys would have been aware of this and we needed an early breakthrough to put the English under pressure. They opened with Joe Root which again I felt if we get him early, the English could panic. Wishful thinking on my part as openers Jonny Bairstow and Root were moving smoothly along. Even when Andre Russell smashed the grille visor of Bairstow, it was Russell not Bairstow coming off for treatment as he landed in a heap after stumbling in his follow through. Not even Bairstow seemed worried by the ball; he was more concerned with the damage to the visor as the bowling was as passive as a herd of cows looking for the shade of a tree away from the sun. Worse was to follow when Chris Woakes, who usually bats at number 8 or 9, walked in at number 3. Thankfully Nasser Hussain could not bat as he was doing commentary and not registered.
Some would argue it was a good toss to win. Perhaps it was, but Chris Gayle got caught in the deep when set and Hetmyer and skipper Jason Holder both got out to Root. Maybe there was something in the pitch that eluded my sight. The English achieved 213 for 2 in 33.1 overs and had we bowled another 16.5 overs, the total could have been close to 375 and counting.
Four days on, I figured West Indies got the bad match out of the way and Bangladesh would suffer the anger and venom of a West Indies side that was humbled and humiliated by the English. Little did I expect the performance to be worse. We struggled early on but at one stage we looked set for 350 to 375. When Hetmyer departed, someone decided to push Darren Bravo to number 8 and promote Russell and Holder above him. What happened was Bravo came in with 6.2 overs to go, and with both the big hitters back in the pavilion, we only accumulated 40 runs instead of around 80, which would have taken the score to 361. I was still comfortable with 321; my thoughts at that time were if only we can bowl as well as we did against the Aussies, we should come away victorious.
It was not to be. The bowling was the most atrocious 41.3 overs that I have witnessed by a West Indies team. Of the 249 balls sent down, at least 200 were short and the Bangladeshi batsmen were waiting on it. For two days they went into the nets and with their batting coach - former South African batsman Neil McKenzie and their bowlers, they bowled short at their batsmen and all they did for 2 days was cut, hook, pull, get in line and duck. They were ready for us.
Joe Root had also given a similar story after the English victory saying to the media, “we spent two days working on the short stuff and you make sure you got a method and back yourself to do it under pressure”.
The problem is we don't seem to have a plan B or C. Surely someone has to think this is enough; pitch the ball up and bowl intelligently and use the short ball as the surprise weapon. When we won the test series here against this same Bangladesh team, of the 20 wickets to fall, 15 went to full-length deliveries - that should tell a story.
I will stick with my original four semi-finalists - Australia, India, England and South Africa. However, with the loss to New Zealand it apperas that the Kiwis will get into the semi-finals. West Indies, 'cheerio' to the 2019 CWC semifinals. Go on, make me eat my words.
Editor's note:
The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and do not reflect the views of any organization of which he is a stakeholder.