A clas­sic ex­am­ple of the adage ‘Si­lence is worth one thou­sand words’ was on dis­play on May 3rd, when Chair­man of se­lec­tors for Crick­et West In­dies, The Most Ho­n­ourable Desmond Haynes, ac­com­pa­nied by two-time for­mer win­ning cap­tain turned white ball coach, Daren Sam­my, an­nounced the squad of 15 play­ers cho­sen to wear the proud ma­roon of the re­gion for next month’s T20 World Cup.

The tour­na­ment will be staged right here in the re­gion, along with some pre­lim­i­nary match­es in the USA and while there are arm­chair se­lec­tors who are of­ten quite vo­cal and quick to rip apart any team cho­sen or de­ci­sions made by Crick­et West In­dies, of­ten with mer­it, the lack of ques­tions and even the en­thu­si­asm by the re­porters present and oth­ers con­nect­ed through Zoom, in­di­cat­ed one glar­ing fact—the se­lec­tors got it right, or very, very close to right!

Even now, a few days af­ter the dust has set­tled there is still lit­tle dis­sent from the thou­sands of crit­ics who would nor­mal­ly have the call in pro­grammes and oth­er sources where they could share their dis­con­tent!

There are just one or maybe two bones of con­tention with the squad and they lie with the se­lec­tion of Shim­ron Het­my­er and maybe the omis­sion of Kyle May­ers and even these have been rel­a­tive­ly mut­ed.

The truth is that the se­lec­tors did a good job and cov­ered most of the bases in se­lect­ing a team which if prop­er­ly man­aged and mo­ti­vat­ed, can in­deed win this World Cup, es­pe­cial­ly when the added ad­van­tage of play­ing at home in the Caribbean, is fac­tored in.

And here­in lies the biggest chal­lenge. Can this team be prop­er­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, pre­pared, and ready to play and beat the Aus­tralias, In­dias, Eng­lands, and even the New Zealan­ders of the world? And not just on the crick­et field, but in the class­room where the ap­proach to the game and most im­por­tant­ly, the strat­e­gy is worked out.

The re­al­i­ty is that T20 crick­et is un­pre­dictable and hit and miss and very of­ten, the best team doesn’t win. It of­ten boils down to what hap­pens on a par­tic­u­lar day.

All it takes is one ex­cep­tion­al in­di­vid­ual per­for­mance with ei­ther bat or ball to de­ter­mine an out­come. There is al­so a word few sports­men like, but al­so plays a huge role in the out­come—Luck!

The luck of win­ning the toss – or los­ing it—could be crit­i­cal as a team can get the best of the con­di­tions, while the team los­ing may ben­e­fit from see­ing how a pitch plays and mak­ing nec­es­sary ad­just­ments.

While many of the purest still de­spise the for­mat, T20 crick­et is fast-paced, un­pre­dictable, and ex­cit­ing. A de­liv­ery that may be per­fect in a Test Match or even an ODI may be smashed to the ropes or even out of the ground. One sin­gle over in which a top edge goes for six and con­tains a few more streaky bound­aries can change a match, as can a cou­ple of wick­ets in an over, a bril­liant run out, or a spec­tac­u­lar catch.

That is the luck el­e­ment of T20 and where - on our day, the West In­dies team can com­pete with and beat any team in the world as coach Sam­my said when an­nounc­ing the team, 15 po­ten­tial match win­ners have been se­lect­ed!

And he is cor­rect as the likes of An­dre Rus­sell, Nicholas Pooran, Rov­man Pow­ell, Shim­ron Het­my­er, Ja­son Hold­er and Ro­mario Shep­herd are all world-renowned pow­er hit­ters, and Akeal Ho­sein, cur­rent­ly ranked #3 in bowl­ing, can turn a game in its head!

The thing is that this can be said of prac­ti­cal­ly every ma­jor team com­ing to the tour­na­ment as they all have match-win­ners as well.

So what is the key to trans­form­ing the West In­dies from a group of in­di­vid­ual su­per­stars in­to a win­ning team? The an­swer – the use of strat­e­gy and tech­nol­o­gy!

Win the game in the class­room be­fore com­ing on­to the field!

Like it or not, tech­nol­o­gy now plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et with every ma­jor team em­ploy­ing some­one who pro­vides analy­sis on every op­pos­ing play­er, high­light­ing their strengths, weak­ness­es, and habits. A bats­man may play a cer­tain shot to a cer­tain length de­liv­ery, a fast bowler may bowl a slow­er ball af­ter two quick ones or a leg spin­ner may bowl a goo­gly af­ter be­ing struck for a bound­ary.

Know­ing and coun­ter­ing these lit­tle nu­ances could be the dif­fer­ence be­tween win­ning and los­ing!

Con­tin­ues on page 57

Coach Sam­my shared that even the West In­dies, renowned for be­ing late to the par­ty, now has such an an­a­lyst and the ex­e­cu­tion of what­ev­er plan emerges from the da­ta that is com­piled and an­a­lyzed will de­ter­mine just how far the team can go in the tour­na­ment, or even win it.

Al­though there are ob­vi­ous dif­fer­ences, tech­nol­o­gy has made T20 crick­et a bit sim­i­lar to Ma­jor League Base­ball where each team knows pret­ty much every­thing about their op­po­nents, and a match is played more like chess than a ball game.

In base­ball, the man­ag­er’s un­der­stand­ing and coun­ter­ing a bat­ter’s traits like; a left-hand­ed bat­ter doesn’t fair well against left-hand­ed pitch­ing; a par­tic­u­lar play­er hits on­ly ground balls to the short­stop; an­oth­er hits on­ly fast­balls, and an­oth­er is weak against curve balls. This, even more than in­di­vid­ual abil­i­ty is what makes the dif­fer­ence in the game’s out­come and maybe it’s time for crick­et to con­tin­ue its evo­lu­tion and adopt some of these tac­tics.

Just like base­ball, where the best bat­ters get a ‘hit’ about 25% of the time and the very best around 30%, per­for­mance in T20I crick­et is so in­con­sis­tent that on­ly four play­ers in his­to­ry have an av­er­age over 50.

The game is how­ev­er so fast-paced, that the rate at which the runs are scored has be­come just as im­por­tant as how many runs are scored. Vi­rat Kholi, one of those av­er­ag­ing 50+, re­cent­ly scored a cen­tu­ry in the IPL but was se­vere­ly crit­i­cized for bat­ting too slow­ly!

As ear­li­er men­tioned open­ing bats­man May­ers is one of the few play­ers men­tioned as be­ing un­lucky in not be­ing se­lect­ed, but it can al­so be not­ed that of late it seems he has been “worked out” - of­ten dis­missed af­ter lash­ing a cou­ple of bound­aries and then ‘hold­ing out’, un­done by a sim­i­lar look­ing de­liv­ery which may be just a bit faster or slow­er.

This is what crick­et has be­come in 2024 and it’s no longer just about hav­ing the abil­i­ty, it’s now more about us­ing tech­nol­o­gy and da­ta to for­mu­late a plan for each bats­man, each bowler, and every pos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion that may oc­cur in a game and then the abil­i­ty to ex­e­cute that plan!

It was pleas­ing to hear the lead se­lec­tor and coach talk about the spe­cif­ic roles be­ing es­tab­lished for every play­er cho­sen and this ra­tio­nale may well have quelled the usu­al fer­vor, as they seem to have cov­ered most, if not all, of the bases, as apart from a left-arm fast bowler, the team is quite bal­anced.

Bran­don King is com­ing off an in­jury and his record open­ing the bat­ting isn’t spe­cial, but as Sam­my said, on his day, he could be a dif­fer­ence-mak­er. The same can be said of John­son Charles, who though a lot more ex­pe­ri­enced, is just as in­con­sis­tent. The thing is he is al­so un­pre­dictable in stroke play and shot se­lec­tion and thus ca­pa­ble of tak­ing apart any at­tack in the world for 30 or 40 runs and if he can get these quick enough, he would have done his job.

Speak­ing of roles, if Shai Hope has been picked in a squad of big hit­ters should be fur­ther ku­dos to the se­lec­tors, who like every­one with eyes re­al­ize that he is the one true world-class bats­man cur­rent­ly in the re­gion and HAS to be in not on­ly T20s, but al­so ODIs and Tests!

Hope is un­like­ly to see much ac­tion un­less Pooran is in­jured or top open­ers fail woe­ful­ly, but he is our im­me­di­ate fu­ture and should he watch and try to em­u­late Kholi and per­haps Kane Williamson of NZ, two classy all-for­mat play­ers, who ad­just their games and score heav­i­ly while nev­er re­sort­ing to slog­ging. They find gaps and run hard be­tween the wick­ets (few­er dot balls) and try not to play un­char­ac­ter­is­tic shots! The bad ball will come along!

That said, Hope is un­like­ly to play un­less the top or­der fails bad­ly or Pooran (wick­et­keep­er) is in­jured - as Ros­ton Chase may be a bet­ter op­tion due to his team-best econ­o­my off spin (6.59) and his im­proved strike rate (111). He too can hold the mid­dle around the big fire­works hit­ters, while al­so hav­ing the abil­i­ty to smash a few of his own.

The fi­nal XI should pro­vide con­sid­er­able headaches for the se­lec­tors, a nice prob­lem to have, as with the su­per­stars pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned there are just a few avail­able spots.

While Sher­fane Ruther­ford has shown ma­tu­ri­ty and looked great in re­cent match­es, it’s dif­fi­cult to see he or Gu­dakesh Motie mak­ing the fi­nal cut, and truth be told, the new­ly mint­ed vice-cap­tain Az­zari Joseph has not ex­act­ly set the world on fire in T20s and has even lost his place for Roy­al Chal­lengers Ben­galu­ru in the on­go­ing IPL, so in­ef­fec­tive, pre­dictable and ex­pen­sive he has proven!

When asked about a po­ten­tial X-Fac­tor who may pro­vide Car­los Brath­waite 2016 hero­ics, coach Sam­my and lead se­lec­tor Haynes were care­ful not to place pres­sure on an in­di­vid­ual.

How­ev­er new Guyanese fast bowl­ing sen­sa­tion, Shamar Joseph, may well be this not-so-se­cret, but still rel­a­tive­ly un­known weapon!

Still yet to earn his first T20I cap, Shamar is still a mys­tery to most of the world’s bats­men and if uti­lized cor­rect­ly, could be that ace up Pow­ell’s sleeve!

As Sam­my said, his con­trol and pace are un­de­ni­able - as proven dur­ing his his­toric de­but se­ries down un­der, when his re­mark­able 2nd in­nings 7/68 al­most sin­gle-hand­ed­ly gave the West In­dies their first win in Aus­tralia in over 25 years.

Even the vaunt­ed Aussies - play­ing at home, found his pace and ac­cu­ra­cy dis­turb­ing and even though he had a rough de­but over in the IPL for Luc­know Su­per Gi­ants go­ing for a whop­ping 22 runs, he may still be ‘The One’!

Shamar should just put that match be­hind him, as even the vaunt­ed Mitchell Starc and Pat Cum­mins have al­so been ham­mered in this IPL and per­haps the on­ly fast bowler to es­cape re­al pun­ish­ment has been the world’s best, Jaspir­it Bum­rah.

With adren­a­line pump­ing, the 100% sup­port of thou­sands of ador­ing WI fans, and a tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven plan in how and where to at­tack bats­men – who still don’t know that much about him – Shamar, who has al­ready proven he is not scared or in­tim­i­dat­ed by the big stage or big mo­ments – may yet emerge as the WI hero of the 2024 World Cup.

It would how­ev­er have been great if Sam­my hadn’t an­nounced to the world that the plan is to use him in the pow­er play. So much for sur­prise and strat­e­gy…

In the end, it may not be Shamar, but it’s the hope and dream of every West In­di­an sup­port­er at home and glob­al­ly, that on June 29th, the team is not on­ly in the fi­nal in Bar­ba­dos, but a new Car­los Brath­waite emerges, takes the Windies to their third ti­tle and for­ev­er etch their name in the folk­lore of West In­dies crick­et.