Nico­las Pooran is ar­guably the most at­tack­ing and de­struc­tive bats­man in T20 crick­et, the most ab­bre­vi­at­ed and en­thralling form of the game in the con­tem­po­rary pe­ri­od. He is al­ways set to take on the first ball he re­ceives with his spe­cial­i­ty hooks and pulls be­tween wide mid-on and square leg. It mat­ters not the bowler; his in­tent is to dic­tate to and sub­due who­ev­er he may be, how­ev­er big his rep­u­ta­tion, it does not mat­ter.

Pooran takes ful­ly to him­self the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to make him com­pli­ant with his agen­da. On his day (that qual­i­fi­ca­tion still lingers even though Pooran has be­come far more con­sis­tent with his scor­ing over the last 12-16 months) with sweet tim­ing and the pow­er de­rived from hit­ting the ball in the sweet spot of the bat and at the right mo­ment are the sources of the rel­a­tive­ly small left-han­der be­ing able to gen­er­ate un­usu­al height and dis­tance; re­mem­ber­ing too that he does not ap­proach the size and strength of Chris Gayle, An­dre Rus­sell, and/or Kier­an Pow­ell.

Pooran has be­come a chal­lenge to a bowler and a field­ing cap­tain; in­evitably, the field­ing team set­tles for him to miss time or be­come over­ly ar­ro­gant in his am­bi­tions.

Take a look at him when he walks away from the wick­et, no fret­ting with him­self sim­ply be­ing a silent pris­on­er of his am­bi­tions to de­stroy bowlers; it has noth­ing to do with the bowlers. I read many years ago of one of Pooran’s pre­de­ces­sors, Ro­han Kan­hai, play­ing against an Eng­land team for a young West In­di­an se­lec­tion who treat­ed True­man and Statham, one of the great­est pairs of that coun­try’s fast bowlers, as if they were a cou­ple fete-match trundlers.

The young man from McBean Vil­lage, Cou­va, has not just ap­peared, and we shall ex­plore and record the his­to­ry of his West In­di­an crick­et­ing an­ces­try; he ain’t fall from no bread­fruit tree.

But Pooran is not mere­ly a big hit­ter over the leg side. His flu­en­cy through the off­side from square with the wick­et to the straight dri­ve past the bowler and out of the reach of long-off and his big dri­ves over the off­side field dis­play the re­al­i­ty that he has got it all; at­tack be­ing his de­fence. Of in­ter­est in ob­serv­ing him, he does not give off a sense of de­light in his de­struc­tion of bowlers; it’s not a chal­lenge, more of a sense of he hav­ing the right to dic­tate and is sur­prised that any­one, most of all the bowlers, could have ex­pect­ed any oth­er form of treat­ment.

He is not a Lawrence Rowe and/or Frank Wor­rell, silky and smooth; he does not have the pow­er and sense of bru­tal dom­i­nance of Richards and/or Lloyd; it’s more like pos­sess­ing the birthright, which he in­her­it­ed from Sobers, Kan­hai, Greenidge, and be­fore them the great E D Weeks and the plun­der­er of the 3 Ws, Clyde Wal­cott. It is now not a vi­able op­tion to seek to en­cour­age Pooran (like I did in the past) to de­vote his time and tal­ents to Test crick­et.

He is a crea­ture of the bright lights, the crowd sup­port, and the deliri­ous en­joy­ment of those who know not and do not care about the dif­fer­ence be­tween square leg and first slip. The chal­lenge of the bats­man is to send them in­to pal­pi­ta­tions by pro­ject­ing the ball in­to the stands—they get a dizzy tit­il­la­tion to add to that of the win­er girls in their “short lit­tle shorts.”

West In­di­ans can keep their slap on the backs and the telling of past tales of the grandeur of their bats­men for the small rum shops sit­u­at­ed all over Bar­ba­dos and in the West In­di­an crick­et­ing na­tions.

For old-timers like this writer, brought up on the clas­si­cal bats­man­ship of Hobbs, Brad­man, Ham­mond, Headley, Wor­rell, Weekes, Sobers, Richards, H Mo­hammed, and Gavaskar, among oth­ers, we shall have to pre­serve those ex­pe­ri­ences and sto­ries in our minds and tell them to our grand­chil­dren, if in­deed they are in­ter­est­ed in hear­ing be­tween the 6s scream­ing in­to the stands with the full blast of the so­ca dee­jays.

That great West In­di­an, Clive Lloyd, who turned 80 re­cent­ly—bless­ings to you, big man, one of the great­est of West In­di­an lead­ers across all fields of en­deav­our—was one of the first to say that the T20 game is re­tard­ing our crick­et, and he was fol­lowed by many oth­ers, in­clud­ing this colum­nist.

We must how­ev­er now put in­to per­spec­tive the his­to­ry (the great­est teacher of the present and the fu­ture) of Pooran’s as­cent, and I note here that Pooran’s fel­low de­stroy­er, Het­my­er, is ma­tur­ing; let’s hope he comes in­to his own. Un­like what it may be thought, Pooran is no or­phan, no “John­ny come late­ly” to his tak­ing on the role of en­ter­tain­er, sell­er of skills to the high­est bid­der as a means of gain­ing recog­ni­tion and a big purse to le­git­i­mate­ly cash in on his tal­ents; he is mere­ly an­oth­er in the past and con­tem­po­rary gen­er­a­tion of West In­di­an crick­eters who have trad­ed their skills on the open mar­ket

. Just to say here he has come to the role es­tab­lished by his coun­try­man, the great Learie Con­stan­tine. To be con­tin­ued.