Against a strong Aus­tralian Test team, the West In­dies were stripped naked of their pre­ten­sions to be­ing fit to be con­sid­ered in the first rank of test-play­ing na­tions. The bowl­ing, eu­phemisti­cal­ly re­ferred to as an “at­tack,” was ripped to shreds in the two match­es by Aus­tralian bats­men Steve Smith, Travis Head and Mar­cus Labuschagne.

The Windies bowl­ing com­bi­na­tions nev­er seemed ca­pa­ble of pen­e­tra­tion, and or in­deed sub­du­ing the ap­petite of Aus­tralian bat­ting com­bi­na­tions to score big runs and in man­ner un­con­cerned with any threat from the bowlers.

It’s a true that be­cause of a num­ber of in­juries in the sec­ond game, the Windies bowl­ing was re­duced to part-timers who were nev­er meant to be op­er­at­ing in a Test match.

Al­though mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter in the first Test, the bowl­ing pro­vid­ed lit­tle chal­lenge to the Aus­tralian bat­ters, tak­ing a to­tal of on­ly six wick­ets in the two in­nings as the Aus­tralians scored with­in two runs of 600 runs in their first knock. In the sec­ond in­nings, the Aussies gath­ered 182 for two wick­ets, in­tent and as­sured of be­ing able to dis­miss the West In­di­ans with­out any con­cern for a chal­lenge to the 400-plus runs re­quired to win, or for the vis­tors to bat for the bet­ter part of two days to save the game.

Aus­tralia won the sec­ond Test by 419 runs with the Windies on­ly able to score 77 in their sec­ond in­nings. So as­sured of the weak­ness of the West In­dies, the Aussie se­lec­tors rest­ed a cou­ple of their main fast bowlers.

If the West In­di­an bowl­ing lacked pen­e­tra­tion, the bat­ting was even weak­er. Apart from skip­per Kraigg Brath­waite and new­com­er Tage­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, the oth­ers did not look as if they be­longed in a West In­di­an team which pro­duced a cou­ple gen­er­a­tions of the great­est and most dev­as­tat­ing bats­men to have ever played the game.

One of those cham­pi­ons of the past, Bri­an Lara, view­ing the game from the com­men­tary booth, not­ed that apart from the two open­ers, Brath­waite and Chan­der­paul, the oth­ers were not play­ing straight and not meet­ing the ball with the full face of the bat. It can­not be that bats­men are reach­ing Test-match lev­el with such de­fi­cien­cies in their tech­niques.

It was re­port­ed by the Aus­tralian press that Lara and Carl Hoop­er, the lat­ter who lives and coach­es in Aus­tralia, met the Windies play­ers in their dress­ing room dur­ing the sec­ond Test. That kind of in­ter­ac­tion is what is need­ed on a per­ma­nent ba­sis; not over an hour or two on a whim, but as a mat­ter of the de­vel­op­ment of bowlers, bats­men and field­s­men. In ad­di­tion to tech­nique, the crit­i­cal men­tal ap­proach to con­test­ing suc­cess­ful­ly against the best teams needs at­ten­tion.

Af­ter the hor­ren­dous dis­play of the team in the re­cent ICC T20 cham­pi­onships, the board an­nounced an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to their per­for­mances.

How­ev­er, the un­der­ly­ing phys­i­cal and men­tal weak­ness­es of the team have been known for the last 20 years. There have been no few­er than three com­mis­sions which have made ma­jor rec­om­men­da­tions for the re­vival of crick­et in the re­gion. What is des­per­ate­ly need­ed is a con­cen­trat­ed and in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach to solv­ing the prob­lems.