Col­in Croft

Once again, be­fore we can go on to crick­et and sport, let us spend a few thoughts on the loss of one clos­et­ed with Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart, Al­bert Ein­stein, Bill Gates and Thomas Edi­son, all tremen­dous in­no­va­tors, lega­cy-mak­ers and out­right ge­nius­es. What a cre­ative man Steve Paul Jobs had been. I agree with a tweet I got from Cana­da: "There have been three very sig­nif­i­cant ap­ples in our lives -first­ly, the one that Adam and Eve ate in Gar­den of Eden, then that ap­ple that fell on the head of that great sci­en­tist, Sir Isaac New­ton, dis­cov­er­ing grav­i­ty and fi­nal­ly, the "Ap­ple" cre­at­ed by Steve Jobs." I have nev­er owned an "Ap­ple" prod­uct. I do have much re­spect and knowl­edge of the late Jobs. Hav­ing worked at IBM dur­ing my ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in 1980s; my first lap­top was an IBM 760-ED, in 1995; I have been hooked on PCs, but I al­so ac­knowl­edge that Macs are very, very com­pa­ra­ble too. The man was one of few to have af­fect­ed our lives so pro­found­ly last 100 years. Our very think­ing has been ab­solute­ly in­flu­enced by the works of Jobs. No-one who us­es any form of tech­nol­o­gy and com­put­ers, re­gard­less of make or mod­el, would not have recog­nised the in­put to our lives of Jobs.

As some­one who has used mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy tremen­dous­ly in avi­a­tion and sport, I had to know every­thing about I-phones, I-pads, I-pods, Ap­ple, I-Mac, Mac­in­tosh and Pixar, some words that Job has left with us. Af­ter all, from time to time, I had to buy these stun­ning "toys" for my off-spring too. Every­one is right. Our lex­i­con, the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal, will in­clude these names for­ev­er. I would wa­ger that at least 50 per cent, at an ex­treme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive guess, of the near­ly 7 bil­lion peo­ple in our world, have used, are us­ing, or will soon use, one of Job's gad­gets in their life­time. Ap­ple, whose es­ti­mat­ed val­ue is around US$350 bil­lion, is the world's most valu­able tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, and sec­ond most valu­able brand in the world, pe­ri­od, af­ter oil gi­ant Exxon-Mo­bile. Most of this is due to the in­no­va­tion, and un­be­liev­able mar­ket­ing skills, of one of its founders, Steve Jobs; out for 56! Let us close this chap­ter with an Ap­ple mot­to: "The world is im­mea­sur­ably bet­ter be­cause of Steve!"

If you like T20s, you might al­so think that the world is bet­ter off be­cause of its in­ven­tion too, one that has on­ly been around less than 10 years. The Nokia Cham­pi­ons League T20 2011 has been ex­cel­lent! T&T, as a group, rep­re­sent­ed the Caribbean well and should hold their col­lec­tive heads up with pride for the ef­fort made in In­dia. They may not have pro­gressed to the se­mi-fi­nals, but that could be ac­count­ed to the facts of some strange in-play de­ci­sions. They did do quite well any­way. One thing that T20 crick­et has done, along with im­prove out-field­ing and un­der-light catch­ing much, is that it forces cap­tains to make de­ci­sion in split-sec­onds. There sim­ply is lit­tle time to think any­more. Even as a cap­tain con­tem­plates what changes he might make, two or three vi­tal overs could have gone. The long, pon­der­ous, some­times ex­cit­ing Test crick­et al­lows for plan­ning that takes five days, if not longer, while 50-over crick­et, as will be played in Guyana this month with West In­dies "Re­gion­al Su­per-50," could some­times be so pedes­tri­an, as it me­an­ders along. T20 crick­et is near­ly as fast as light­en­ing!

Some­how, this is like com­par­ing the speed and re­ac­tion times re­quired by the rel­a­tive­ly slow but high­ly re­li­able and suc­cess­ful 700-MPH Boe­ing-747-400, to that of the speed and re­ac­tion times need­ed for the much more ag­ile, ac­ro­bat­ic, speedy, if some­times tem­pera­men­tal F-22 Rap­tor In­ter­cep­tor at Mach 2.0! T20s al­so al­low that all play­ers, in­di­vid­u­al­ly, in­clud­ing cap­tains, must con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly, ei­ther in his/her spe­cial­i­ty-bat­ting or bowl­ing-or be rel­a­tive­ly good at all three as­pects of the game, bat­ting, bowl­ing, and field­ing. Good, even great lead­er­ship alone, in T20s, does not al­low cap­tains any lee­way!

Daren Gan­ga has been very good as T&T cap­tain, in all forms of the game-Four-days, 50-over and, un­til re­cent­ly, T20s too. How­ev­er, his dis­mal run of bat­ting form made him a li­a­bil­i­ty in the T20 tour­na­ment. I be­lieve that that slump in form af­fect­ed his de­ci­sion-mak­ing; hence mis­takes! Con­fi­dence brings brava­do, re­gard­less of who you are. Just ask some great sports­men and women -Muham­mad Ali, Ser­e­na Williams, John Mc En­roe, Dan­i­ca Patrick and Michael John­son. Fail­ure with one's own game forces con­fi­dence to ebb. Noth­ing, not even con­vinc­ing one's self, helps af­ter that.

It is from such sports stars that we glean that play­ing and look­ing good make no sense at all if you do not win. No-one cares how good you look in los­ing. Most, at least the suc­cess­ful stars, not on­ly want to win but need to win. It is not for noth­ing that, like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, "the world likes a win­ner!"

Emo­tion aside, prac­ti­cal­ly, T&T should have qual­i­fied for se­mi-fi­nals, hav­ing the ex­pe­ri­ences of past com­pe­ti­tions, and es­pe­cial­ly af­ter those two qual­i­fy­ing match­es for this year's tour­na­ment, against Sri Lan­ka's Ruhu­na and Eng­land's Leices­ter­shire; T&T win­ning both. Against Mum­bai In­di­ans, first in Nokia CLT20 prop­er, T&T's bats­men let them­selves down, with bad crick­et. On­ly Adri­an Barath may have been gen­uine­ly dis­missed. All oth­ers lit­er­al­ly gave wick­ets away. Nine­ty-eight (98) in 20 overs is not even a be­low par score. It should al­ways be a los­ing score, but for good bowlers. T&T's bowlers were ex­cel­lent, the field­ing just less so, per­haps af­fect­ed by the bat­ting fail­ure – lack of runs brings less con­fi­dence and more pres­sure. Had it not been for the skills of the bowlers, T&T could not even have been close, but they went for broke, know­ing that it is very hard to de­fend 98 runs. One un­der­stands Sher­win Gan­ga be­ing left to bowl over 20; 11 runs need­ed. The ef­fort was to dis­miss Mum­bai, not re­strict them, hence the ex­tend­ed use of bet­ter bowlers ear­li­er. But a mis­take was then made. 19.5 overs; two runs to win, one to tie, one wick­et to get; the field set al­lowed a sin­gle. Two runs had!

Smart­ing from that de­bil­i­tat­ing loss to Mum­bai, T&T then lost the next game, to New South Wales Blues, again from bad de­ci­sion mak­ing. Here, cap­tain Gan­ga se­ri­ous­ly con­fused "West In­dies" to mean 'best'.

Samuel Badree, one of T&T's best three T20 bowlers -the oth­er two are Sunil Nar­ine and Kevon Coop­er-is not on­ly bet­ter than, as a T20 bowler, but is al­so se­nior to Ravi Ram­paul in T&T's team.

If Badree could "open bowl­ing," and re­strict so well, how come he did not bowl that "su­per over" with to­tals tied-an­oth­er T&T bat­ting slump-at 139, af­ter 20 overs? Win­ning the last two games, Coop­er show­ing what con­fi­dence in his bowl­ing brought to his bats­man­ship, was good for T&T's ego, psy­che and for head­lines. They did show some re­solve. By then, it was too late. I am sure that when the emo­tion and breast-beat­ing is com­plet­ed, the en­tire T&T team, the coun­try, and the re­gion, will rue missed op­por­tu­ni­ties.