My New Year’s res­o­lu­tion was to be more pos­i­tive, as I’m a glass-half-full kind of per­son. Ex­cept when it comes to West In­dies crick­et.

Then, the glass has re­cent­ly been emp­ty, cracked, and pos­si­bly be­ing used as an ash­tray by a grounds­man. I gen­uine­ly want to be pos­i­tive—I re­al­ly do. But some­times, you have to call a spade a spade, even if that spade is cur­rent­ly dig­ging a hole for West In­dies crick­et. Still, I’ll try my best to find some sliv­er of hope, but let’s be clear: this isn’t go­ing to be easy.

As I pre­dict­ed, the West In­dies were sim­ply out­classed by Pak­istan in the first Test, a con­test that con­clud­ed with wor­ry­ing haste in just three days. While I’d pre­fer to fo­cus on the pos­i­tives, the stark re­al­i­ty is that the vis­i­tors bare­ly faced enough de­liv­er­ies (61.5 overs across two in­nings) to jus­ti­fy even a sec­ond new ball—a sta­tis­tic that speaks vol­umes.

In my col­umn a few weeks ago, I in­di­cat­ed that the pitch in Mul­tan would take spin from the first ball. It was, there­fore, no sur­prise to see the Pak­istan team with just one fast-medi­um bowler and four spin­ners. West In­dies went in­to the Test with three spin­ners and Jay­den Seales, with Justin Graves as a back­up fast-medi­um bowler. Af­ter Pak­istan won the toss and elect­ed to bat, the sight of Gu­dakesh Motie open­ing the bowl­ing on the first morn­ing of a Test with the new ball in hand must have sent shiv­ers of hor­ror down the spines of fast-bowl­ing purists like Andy Roberts and Michael Hold­ing.

At 46 for 4, there was a glim­mer of hope that the West In­dies could re­strict Pak­istan to a man­age­able to­tal, around the 125 mark. How­ev­er, Saud Sha­keel, in his 18th Test, and the sea­soned Mo­ham­mad Rizwan, play­ing his 38th, had oth­er plans. Their 141-run part­ner­ship pro­pelled Pak­istan to a more re­spectable 230, which was about 105 runs more than they should have scored af­ter the West In­dies bowlers made ear­ly in­roads in­to the Pak­istan bat­ting line­up. They nav­i­gat­ed the spin-friend­ly con­di­tions with skill and ex­pe­ri­ence, demon­strat­ing a com­po­sure that, re­gret­tably, elud­ed the West In­di­an bats­men.

And then, the wheels tru­ly came off. Be­fore one could ut­ter “Kraigg Brath­waite”, the West In­dies had col­lapsed to 66 for 8. It took a record-break­ing, low­er-or­der ral­ly, spear­head­ed by Motie (19, re­mark­ably the third-high­est scor­er), Jomel War­ri­can (31 not out, the top scor­er), and Seales (22, sec­ond-high­est scor­er), to bring the to­tal to 137 and pre­vent a com­plete bat­ting dis­as­ter. This was the first time in the his­to­ry of Test crick­et, since the first-ever Test Match in 1877 over 148 years ago, that the last three bats­men made the high­est scores for a team in an in­nings. Imag­ine that! And to prove just how rare an oc­cur­rence this was, all three bats­men went on to make duck in the sec­ond in­nings.

I am un­sure what prepa­ra­tions the team made be­fore and af­ter ar­riv­ing in Pak­istan, but they all must have been aware of the spin threat of the home team. Ap­point­ing Joshua Da Sil­va as vice-cap­tain, on­ly to then drop him, is the kind of be­wil­der­ing de­ci­sion that has be­come a hall­mark of West In­dies crick­et in re­cent times. When it comes to West In­dies crick­et, noth­ing sur­pris­es me any­more.

While ex­pect­ing a bat­ting mas­ter­class from the West In­dies might have been un­re­al­is­tic, Al­ick Athanaze’s half-cen­tu­ry in the sec­ond in­nings of­fered a glimpse of what’s pos­si­ble with dis­ci­pline and de­ter­mi­na­tion. It un­der­scores the po­ten­tial with­in the squad and rais­es the ques­tion of con­sis­ten­cy. It’s not about be­rat­ing the bats­men, but about en­cour­ag­ing them to build on these pos­i­tive mo­ments. Scores of 137 and 123 are un­ac­cept­able for a T20 match, worse yet for a Test match, re­gard­less of how much the pitch is turn­ing. The bowlers, whether pace or spin, have been do­ing a good job dis­miss­ing teams for chasable to­tals that one be­lieves the West In­dies bats­men can sur­pass, as was the case for the fi­nal Test match against Bangladesh in Ja­maica last month. It is cru­cial that the bat­ting unit match­es the bowler’s ad­mirable ef­forts.

The bat­ting line­up un­doubt­ed­ly pos­sess­es tal­ent, but trans­lat­ing that po­ten­tial in­to con­sis­tent per­for­mances re­mains a key chal­lenge for Daren Sam­my. How long is the wait­ing pe­ri­od be­fore see­ing that po­ten­tial and tal­ent come to the sur­face? It’s not about im­pa­tience, as West In­di­an fans have been more than pa­tient; it’s about a de­sire to see this team flour­ish.

Skip­per Brath­waite with 97 Tests and 5,874 runs to his name, is bat­ting no bet­ter than the low­er or­der and per­haps a fresh per­spec­tive could ben­e­fit the team. I have al­ready said that if Sam­my comes to the job with­out any pre­con­ceived no­tions, then Brath­waite’s po­si­tion, both as bats­man and cap­tain, must be re­assessed. His cap­tain­cy lacks imag­i­na­tion and his abil­i­ty to lead is ques­tion­able. It’s not a per­son­al cri­tique, but a sug­ges­tion for ex­plor­ing all av­enues for im­prove­ment.

Mikyle Louis is on­ly 24 and has played eight Tests, but is av­er­ag­ing 21.6 which will have to im­prove if giv­en fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties. I like Kavem Hodge’s at­ti­tude but af­ter 10 Tests, he is av­er­ag­ing 26 from 20 in­nings. He has scored a cen­tu­ry and three half-cen­turies but again, his con­sis­ten­cy comes in­to ques­tion. Kea­cy Car­ty is av­er­ag­ing 17.9 from five Tests and in 10 in­nings, he is yet to reg­is­ter a half-cen­tu­ry. Athanaze is a lit­tle bet­ter with an av­er­age of 27 from 12 Tests, but he needs some ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers to guide him.

Sam­my is walk­ing in­to a mine­field. Un­less he can per­suade some of the white-ball spe­cial­ists to em­brace the red-ball for­mat, the West In­dies will con­tin­ue to strug­gle. And let’s be clear: these play­ers can’t sim­ply waltz back in­to the Test team and mag­i­cal­ly trans­form its for­tunes. I have said be­fore that Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to the re­gion­al boards and fo­cus on play­er de­vel­op­ment from the grass­roots lev­el. It’s no sur­prise that Test crick­et is thriv­ing in the es­tab­lished crick­et­ing na­tions, and it’s equal­ly un­sur­pris­ing that the ICC is con­tem­plat­ing a two-tier sys­tem.

While I un­der­stand the ICC’s ra­tio­nale, I ve­he­ment­ly dis­agree with the two-tier con­cept and be­lieve it could hin­der the de­vel­op­ment of emerg­ing crick­et­ing na­tions. Low­er-ranked teams need ex­po­sure to top-tier op­po­si­tion to de­vel­op at the Test lev­el. FI­FA’s re­cent ex­pan­sion of the World Cup pro­vides a com­pelling counter-ex­am­ple.

Eu­ro­pean gi­ants like France and Spain con­tin­ue to face small­er na­tions, fos­ter­ing growth and com­pe­ti­tion. CWI must fight tooth and nail against this re­gres­sive idea and ad­vo­cate for a sys­tem that ben­e­fits all stake­hold­ers.

Let the Aussies come to the Caribbean and play a se­ries against the hosts so they can test their met­al and learn the art of Test crick­et. Per­haps a tri­an­gu­lar se­ries fea­tur­ing Aus­tralia, In­dia, and the West In­dies in the Caribbean could be con­sid­ered to reignite in­ter­est in Test crick­et in the re­gion. I won­der if the Oval would sell out for an Aus­tralia vs In­dia Test match? Wish­ful think­ing I pre­sume, not on­ly to get that test match in the Caribbean, but al­so to imag­ine a packed sta­di­um watch­ing a Test match in the re­gion. Maybe if we can fix West In­dies crick­et, we won’t have to re­ly on the draw­ing pow­er of Aus­tralia and In­dia. Let us keep our fin­gers and toes crossed for a bet­ter bat­ting dis­play in the sec­ond Test vs Pak­istan which bowls off on Sat­ur­day—more wish­ful think­ing, I sus­pect.