Pour a small nip of some­thing aged and raise your glass­es, the West In­dies Test team has nav­i­gat­ed the en­tire 2026 cal­en­dar year with­out los­ing a sin­gle Test se­ries. Let that sink in for a mo­ment. West In­dies has not pulled off a feat of this cal­i­bre since 1994, a dis­tant era when Richie Richard­son cap­tained in his sig­na­ture ma­roon flop­py hat, Sir Curt­ly Am­brose broke stumps for fun, and half of the West In­dies cur­rent start­ing XI were not even a thought.

Go­ing through 2026 un­beat­en against Sri Lan­ka, Pak­istan, and Bangladesh is a mile­stone wor­thy of prop­er cel­e­bra­tion. They de­feat­ed Sri Lan­ka in An­tigua, win­ning the first Test and draw­ing the sec­ond. They drew the se­ries against Pak­istan in Trinidad, win­ning the first Test and los­ing the sec­ond and ear­li­er this week, win­ning the se­ries against Bangladesh 1-0. Is the drink tast­ing slight­ly sweet­er? Ab­solute­ly. But has the West In­dies of­fi­cial­ly crossed the Jor­dan and re­claimed world dom­i­nance? Skip­per Ros­ton Chase struck the ex­act right note of ground­ed re­al­ism when he not­ed that WI are sim­ply mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion.

My pri­ma­ry griev­ance with this his­toric run is the sheer scarci­ty of red-ball crick­et on the cal­en­dar. WI played a grand to­tal of 6 Test match­es for the en­tire year, which more re­sem­bles a part-time sum­mer hob­by than an in­ter­na­tion­al Test sched­ule. If you lis­ten to the ad­min­is­tra­tive minds at the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC), you would swear WI is op­er­at­ing un­der a mod­el of equal op­por­tu­ni­ty. On pa­per, Aus­tralia played 6 Tests, Eng­land 7, and In­dia 3 across the same stretch. But do not let mid-year ac­count­ing trick you. Aus­tralia has a 3 Test se­ries lined up against New Zealand be­fore the end of the year to take them to 9, Eng­land has 2 against South Africa, and In­dia sim­ply takes ex­tend­ed breaks be­fore em­bark­ing on four and five-match mar­quee tours (the first of which will be in Jan­u­ary 2027). My on­ly rea­son for the com­par­i­son is that the West In­dies Test crick­eters can on­ly im­prove by play­ing more Test crick­et.

ICC not in­ter­est­ed in West In­dies

Mean­while, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) con­tin­ues to bark like a stray pothound at the back gate while the ICC serves prime cuts to the Big Three and throws CWI a chewed-up chick­en neck. Con­sid­er the ab­sur­di­ty of Pak­istan’s sched­ule ear­li­er this year. They land­ed in the Caribbean for a brief two-Test se­ries, packed their bags, and im­me­di­ate­ly jet­ted off to Eng­land for a prop­er three-Match se­ries. Why? Be­cause it ap­pears CWI rarely puts its foot down at ICC’s ex­ec­u­tive ta­ble, leav­ing them to nav­i­gate the glob­al game like out­casts beg­ging for resid­ual scraps. How do we ex­pect young re­gion­al play­ers to build Test-match en­durance when they spend eight months of the year watch­ing crick­et on tele­vi­sion?

Yet, when the Ma­roon caps did step on­to the park in 2026, they de­liv­ered gen­uine qual­i­ty and dra­ma. The open­ing Test against Sri Lan­ka in An­tigua was a to­tal ex­e­cu­tion. WI dis­man­tled Sri Lan­ka by an in­nings and 217 runs in a match dom­i­nat­ed by Amir Jan­goo’s dou­ble-cen­tu­ry of 233 and Ros­ton Chase’s au­thor­i­ta­tive 194, while all the bowlers played their part in the vic­to­ry. Jan­goo bat­ted with the re­lent­less ap­petite of a play­er who had been over­looked far too many times, while Chase played the role of a sea­soned pro­fes­sion­al. By the sec­ond Test, Shai Hope’s 112 and Justin Greaves’s un­beat­en 180 en­sured WI safe­ly held the line for a 1-0 se­ries tri­umph, af­ter a bet­ter bat­ting dis­play from Sri Lan­ka.

Then came Pak­istan in Trinidad. At Tarou­ba, the West In­dies seam bowlers, in par­tic­u­lar Jay­den Seales and Justin Greaves, ran through the op­po­si­tion like the De­moc­rats did to the Re­pub­li­cans in the midterms. Out­side of Shan Ma­sood and Babar Azam, that Pak­istani bat­ting or­der was eas­i­ly the worst and most frag­ile unit to wear green in re­cent mem­o­ry. Yet, dur­ing the sec­ond Test at the Queen’s Park Oval, WI hand­ed them an un­earned life­line.

For­tu­nate­ly for Pak­istan, they seemed more at home at the Queen’s Park Oval for the sec­ond test, as they played a warm-up game at the venue against the West In­dies A be­fore the se­ries start­ed. Pak­istan utilised their venue warm-up ex­pe­ri­ence, rode Ab­dul­lah Shafique’s un­beat­en 160, and watched the WI mid­dle or­der un­der­go a com­plete men­tal shut­down. WI were bowled out for 117 in the sec­ond in­nings, an atro­cious dis­play that had noth­ing to do with the pitch and every­thing to do with a sud­den ab­sence of ba­sic bat­ting dis­ci­pline. Eas­i­ly their worst bat­ting dis­play in the 6 Test match­es and my on­ly crit­i­cism for what was oth­er­wise a sol­id year with the bat for the WI. Giv­en that Eng­land sub­se­quent­ly swept that same Pak­istan team 3-0, WI should have com­fort­ably closed out a 2-0 se­ries vic­to­ry at home.

Jomel War­ri­can show

The Bangladesh was a good se­ries again for the bats­men, but quick­ly be­came the Jomel War­ri­can show. Vice-cap­tain War­ri­can cap­tured 16 wick­ets across the two Tests to claim a well-de­served Play­er of the Se­ries award. When the bat­ting need­ed to stand firm in Mir­pur and Syl­het, the bat­ting line­up dis­played the nec­es­sary grit to seal the 1-0 re­sult, with each one of the top and mid­dle or­der bats­men con­tribut­ing at dif­fer­ent stages of the se­ries.

The in­di­vid­ual re­port cards for 2026 of­fer plen­ty of en­cour­age­ment. Amir Jan­goo led the bat­ting ag­gre­gate with 478 runs in nine in­nings at a stel­lar av­er­age of 59.75. Justin Greaves post­ed 400 runs at 44.44 along­side his 26 wick­ets with the ball. Ros­ton Chase ac­cu­mu­lat­ed 365 runs at an av­er­age of 52.14, Kavem Hodge av­er­aged 39.55, and Bran­don King con­tributed 328 runs at 41.00. On the bowl­ing front, War­ri­can’s 22 wick­ets on the year led the pack, flanked by 18 wick­ets each from Jay­den Seales and Shamar Joseph. Fur­ther, Ke­mar Roach achieved the his­toric land­mark of join­ing the 300 Test-wick­et club.

Imag­ine the po­ten­tial of this team once Alzarri Joseph re­turns to full health and Shai Hope, who was miss­ing against Bangladesh, re­turns. How­ev­er, I must is­sue one ur­gent plea to coach Daren Sam­my and the se­lec­tion pan­el: keep the wick­et­keep­ing gloves off Shai Hope in red-ball crick­et. Forc­ing your pre­mier bats­man to squat be­hind the stumps for 150 overs be­fore tak­ing guard at num­ber three is an act of self-sab­o­tage. Let the man bat pure­ly as a spe­cial­ist, and he will churn out Test cen­turies with ease.

My re­main­ing wish­list for CWI (as­sum­ing they do not scrap the re­gion­al four-day tour­na­ment again to save a dol­lar) is the de­vel­op­ment of a gen­uine, high-cal­i­bre leg-spin­ner. If WI can pair a qual­i­ty wrist-spin­ner with young Vi­tel Lawes de­vel­op­ing his un­ortho­dox back-of-the-hand vari­a­tions, the bowl­ing at­tack evolves from sol­id to ex­cel­lent.

Go­ing un­beat­en sounds glo­ri­ous in head­line print, but we must re­spect the con­text, as there is still more work to be done: Sri Lan­ka is ranked 7th, Pak­istan 9th, and Bangladesh 5th, while the WI oc­cu­pies 8th. Next year brings the ul­ti­mate tri­al by fire. Pend­ing fi­nal con­fir­ma­tions, WI face a sin­gle Test against Afghanistan be­fore lock­ing horns with third-ranked Aus­tralia and top-ranked New Zealand.

Re­sist­ing the siren song of glob­al T20 dol­lars to ded­i­cate one­self to 5 days of gru­el­ing red-ball crick­et re­quires im­mense char­ac­ter. West In­dies, the road ahead re­mains steep, and as Jim­my Cliff re­mind­ed us, there are many rivers to cross. But the West In­dies is fi­nal­ly step­ping in the right di­rec­tion. Keep the dis­ci­pline tight, keep the fo­cus sharp, and take the fight to the big teams next year. Well done!