Can the Windies bat their way out of crisis this summer?

(Photo by Getty Images)

And so we turn our attention to summer’s second Test series, and another set of inbound cricket tourists, our old friends from the West Indies who bring a storied and proud history of dashing, fearsome, often-times wonderful “calypso” cricket ... and a squad featuring players who’d struggle to get a start with Randwick-Petersham. Actually, they’re not that bad. Some are actually quite good. But once the dominant force of world cricket, today the Windies are, as the saying goes, deep in despair.

Step back. I know what you’re thinking: Ripper. Another in the great canon of “what’s wrong with West Indies cricket” yarns. Soon he’ll be harking back to the ’80s and talking about Viv Richards’ cool arrogance and strut and well-muscled buttocks, and lamenting politics and money and how sad it is they’ve lost that aura when they were the mightiest of cricket teams in all the world ...  Et-freakin’-cetera. And I hear you, Dear Reader! And the editor of this crackerjack sports journal hears you! He didn’t want that sort of piece, I didn’t want to write that sort of piece, and you didn’t want to read that sort of piece. That stuff is older than Sid Barnes’ box.

But what are you gonna do when the Windies’ squad is missing five world-class players – call it half of their best Test XI, who, instead of coming together to represent the people of their island nations while wearing the maroon felt cap of West Indies Test cricket, will be gadding about for “franchises” playing whack-a-mole T20 cricket? In Australia, for dear sweet Dennis Lillee’s sake ...

What are you gonna do when the Test team is ranked ninth in the world? When their spot in the Champions Trophy one-dayers is taken by Bangladesh? What are you gonna do when you Google “West Indies captain” and three blokes come up – two you’ve barely heard of and one’s off playing whack-a-mole?

What are you gonna do when the West Indies Cricket Board and the Players Association sign off on a lucrative sponsorship deal without the consent of senior players on tour in India? A deal that would spread the dollars among all the players represented by the West Indies Player Union rather than those senior men who deemed themselves, as major creators of the wealth, to be therefore logical majority-share benefactors of it.

What are you gonna do when said players, who believed talks to be ongoing, learn the deal has already been signed, and thus engage in an email war with WIPA president Wavell Hinds. Hinds claimed he was responding to a letter signed by the Windies’ ODI captain Dwayne Bravo on behalf of the players. According to Cricinfo, however, Hinds “hoodwinked them by signing a new memorandum of understanding which amounted to the players taking a massive pay cut.”

What are you gonna do when the players, incensed, pull the pin on a tour of India with one ODI, one T20 and three Tests to play? A move that so upset powerful, thrusting, swinging-dick India, they’re threatening to sever relations with the West Indies unless they receive $US42 million in compensation.

What are you gonna do when the coach, according to the WICB website, is “TBA”, after Phil Simmons – in the job six months after success with Ireland and a creditable 1-1 draw in a three-Test series against England – says publicly that the squad picked for one-dayers in Sri Lanka wasn’t the best because it didn’t include Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo?

What are you gonna do when you’ve got coach, captain (Jason Holder) and chairman of selectors (Clive bloody Lloyd) wanting Pollard and Bravo – seemingly marked Never To Be Picked Again following the aborted tour of India, Bravo because he was ODI captain, Pollard because he was seen as Bravo’s major ally – and Courtney Walsh, Eldine Baptiste and Courtney Browne not wanting them? After the latter three won the vote 3-2 (Holder can’t vote), Simmons spoke out, bemoaning “outside influence” on selections, meaning board members. So the board sacked (“suspended”) Simmons. Boards, of course, contain important people who cannot be scolded thus. There shall be no critique of boards.

After the draw in England, people thought yes, coach Simmons, pretty good, must be doing something right. For it was he who for eight years led Ireland to the brink of top-tier cricket nation recognition, whose team of flame-haired green-shirts always played feisty, competitive, have-a-go cricket, and who won everything at second-tier ICC Associates level. And Simmons has always seemed a straight-talking man of the game. Straight enough that he didn’t fear speaking about a team that his reputation and his captain’s reputation would live and die by.

So the board sacked him. And thus here come the Windies, coached by TBA.

So what are you gonna do? You do your best, of course, and talk of this troupe of cricketing troubadours, and what they might bring to this long hot summer of Australian Test cricket. For despite political chicanery that would impress ideological war-horses in our own House of Representatives, this young batch of West Indians, led by a just-24-year-old with a bit of mongrel in him, might not be the worst bunch of mugs to hurl Kookaburras about Down Under. Consider: they drew a three-Test series in England in April and had their moments in the following two-Test series against Australia (admittedly losing by 277 runs and nine wickets). They’ve been given the Hobart Test and the marquee matches in Melbourne and Sydney. And with a bit of luck and the right preparation and attitude and fight, they could stretch each Test into the shadows of day four or even day five. May as well get to know them while we can ...

Jerome Taylor could give the Aussies some trouble. (Photo by Getty Images)

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

In the olden days, an inbound tour lasted all summer (Tests and ODIs) and you got to know the tourists. You felt you did, anyway. There were heroes: Ian Botham, Viv Richards. And villains: Javed Miandad, Ian Botham. And we bayed for their blood in equal measure. Yet the most popular and charismatic of tourists were the West Indies.

How cool were they? All those names – Desmond and Winston and Curtly and Clive. Even the ones called Michael and Brian had the liquid, languid larynxes of the Caribbean. They were so exotic and different, so loose-limbed, so black. And they beat the shit out of us. And we loved them for it.

Today, like most tourists, the Windies will show up a week before the First Test, knock out a three-day practice game they invariably lose to the Tassie Seconds, and then get flogged like horse thieves in said First Test.

This mob of West Indians will be no less cool than their predecessors. No one from those islands walks like they’re clenching a manila folder between their buttocks as they hustle off to an important meeting. But are they any good? Or will it be another terrible slaughter? There are arguments for the latter: only the best teams beat Australia on Australian wickets. But there’s also a little bit that points to the Windies having a little bit about them.

The Dissenting Three in the Pollard-Bravo-Simmons-Clive-Bloody-Lloyd imbroglio, the renowned firm of Walsh, Baptiste and Browne, have sent to our shores a squad invested with youth. And if these young fellows see the tour as a chance to prove themselves, and fight, and challenge, and take it up to Australia and leave nothing in the tank (see Ben Stokes of England), we could love them anew. Maybe not love them. But respect, for sure.

Captain Jason Holder is a hard man. At just 23 it’s clear Windies elders have sought to build their Test team around him, much the same as Australia invested in the likes of Steve Waugh and Ian Healy several years ago, and South Africa did with Graeme Smith. Young men with talent, desire and belief. Holder believes. Like hope, it’s a powerful thing.

Holder’s pace attack – particularly on Australian wickets – could be pretty tasty. Kemar Roach bowls quick skidders that can loom large on a man. Not tall at 172cm, but from wide of the crease he can still bang it into the ribs of right-handers and zap it across the lefties to slip. Aged 21, he nearly broke Ricky Ponting’s elbow. Roachy can really sling it.

Roach’s opening partner should be Jerome Taylor, a right-handed swing man. Australians haven’t liked quality swing over the years (but then who does?) and with a new red rock and accuracy that’s delivered him 122 wickets at 33, economy rate 3.3, Taylor could be difficult early or reversing it late.

First change Shannon Gabriel? Well, he’ll need to be accurate. Because the Aussie batters will fancy him like a delicious meal of roast chicken, say, or a nice roast lamb with rosemary and garlic, and mint sauce, and Yorkshire pudding. They could eat our man Gabriel. But again, this offers opportunities. Harder they go, more chance they fall. But with Dave Warner charging him and Steve Smith tap-dancing over the crease, the medium-fast man needs to be sniper-accurate.

The spinner? Not bad! Sunil Narine’s action needed bio-mechanical observation at the University of Western Australia, for there are shades of Murali about him. There’s not much of him and his mohawk is silly, but he tosses up odd little whatsits, and will fancy himself against the tap-dancers. Particularly on day five ...

But there’s the rub – day five, the endangered Tasmanian Tiger of Test match entertainment. Will we see it? Only if whoever cooked up that wicket at Lord’s in July flies in on a consultancy basis. Because Bellerive has the reputation as a “sporting” wicket. Green early, drying out, crumbling later. A fair dinkum cricket wicket. Like the Gabba but colder. A cold-climate Gabba. Go with that. But it’s not something those brought up whacking tennis balls on Bermudan beaches have likely experienced.

Yet there are batters with a bit about them. Kraigg Brathwaite will defend by any means, a rare beast among young cricketers; your Stonewall Jackson. Who do kids look up to more, Big Show or Boycs? Yet Brathwaite, just 22, has three Test hundreds – 129 against New Zealand, 212 versus Bangladesh and 106 against South Africa (Steyn, Morkel, Philander) on Boxing Day back in 2014.

Marlon Samuels once threatened to be the Next Carl Hooper, such was his authoritative stroke-play, his sweet timing. Samuels has also at times looked like Australia’s elegant stroke-maker, Damien Martyn. There have also been times Samuels has looked like a pot-addled surfer lying on a beach. But he’s 34 now and you’d suggest he knows his game. If Samuels ever craves respect or any sort of legacy, his time is now.

Darren Bravo has also, at times, batted brilliantly in all forms of cricket. Holder has a hundred against England and an unbeaten 83 against Australia. And even with only eight Tests there’s a look about him that commands respect. But he’ll need that and more. Because many of his team-mates are just not good enough.

Captain Jason Holder will lead from the front. (Photo by Getty Images)

MONEY

Can the Windies ever again retain the mantle of All-Powerful Demi-Gods of Cricket? Probably not. There are not many all-powerful demi-gods. And those there have been – Bradman’s ’48 Invincibles, the ’84 West Indies, Steve Waugh’s 16-Test-wins-in-a-row “Unbeatables” – were infused with freaks. But whereas Australia has a “machine” making cricketers, a fine system which pushes elite players up to the top, golden bricks of a massive pyramid, the West Indies have never had that, according to the fine cricket scribe Jarrod Kimber, producer-director of the excellent documentary Death Of A Gentleman.

“Australia hit a lull in the mid-’80s, but came out of it because of the system,” says Kimber. “When the West Indies hit a lull, they went over a cliff. Over the last few years they have found talent. But they’re an amateur team living in a professional world. So many talented players just disappear because of injuries that a professionally run sport would improve.

“Others are on a million dollars in the Indian Premier League but getting a thousand bucks a game playing for their country. So they put the franchises first.”

Kimber says the money simply isn’t there for the West Indies to put their best Test XI on the field. “They are made up of several different nations all looking for their own slice of a small pie. That means everyone is kept in cricket’s dark ages.”

Might they one day just cease to exist? Could the Board of Control of Cricket in India sue the West Indies out of existence? Why would they do that when it’s rumoured BCCI has a war-chest of $8 billion? And with a new president, Shashank Manohar, who’s trying to clean up BCCI’s image by cleaning up governance, Kimber notes that “suing the WICB out of existence would seem like a pretty poor and pointless way to do that”. Can you ask the Big Three to spread the love? To throw money at developing cricket in “second-tier” countries like Pakistan and South Africa and not keep all the money to themselves despite them being the biggest generators of it?

Willow-wielder Darren Bravo. (Photo by Getty Images)

STRAYA

The Aussies? Relegated to the last stanza of this piece? Have we no respect? Oh, we have respect. But we can lavish too much love upon these people. Particularly people who look so snarly on the television during their batsmen send-offs, compared to those Nice New Zealanders, for instance. Now, I bow to no man in my appreciation for Brad Haddin, the street-fighter with one of the best lofted off-drives there’s ever been. Viv Richards had a lofted off-drive with similar power. But a ’keeper, or anyone in slips, or any fielder, getting lippy and saying ner-ner-ne-ner-ner to a batsman departing the scene, it’s churlish and childish, for mine, whatever justification Haddin had that it’s a man’s game played hard.

Mind you, don’t mind a fast bowler doing it so much. For mine, that’s part of the street theatre of Test cricket in the cauldron. Lillee did it and so does the two-prong death attack of Mitchells Johnson and Starc. Ishant Sharma does it, too. Anyway. Hadds is gone and here we are, and these Australians have a pretty fair chance of winning the Frank Worrell Trophy series 3-nil. Granted this is the journo who predicted Australia would win the last Ashes series 5-0. But at the time you could make a case. And this time around, Australia should probably rent asunder these baby West Indians. And it could start from ball one in Hobart. Say Holder wins the toss and likes the clover tinge in the strip and puts Australia in and David Warner rips off one of those 70-ball centuries, and then goes on with it for the day and finishes unbeaten (or perhaps out last ball of the day trying to hit a six) on 294. That could happen.

That would not be a harbinger of a competitive series.

Opening with the Bull? Does it matter? We’ll know more after the New Zealand series whether Shaun Marsh is the Test player his talent says he is. Ditto Usman Khawaja. Those two guys, you couldn’t ask for tighter, more appealing techniques. They don’t even look like getting out. Which they do, a bit too much to be, as yet, considered top-order Test men.

But again, does it matter? For coming in at four or five is Steve Smith, and he has owned entire Test series with his batting. He seems a champion-in-waiting. Elsewhere Adam Voges is 36 and probably in his last hot summer. Other end of the spectrum are a pair of pups in Cameron Bancroft and Nic Maddison, about whom much lyrical has been waxed, even in this very issue of this fine magazine. It would be good to have an extended look at them both. Mitch Marsh will get an extended run to be our Next Shane Watson (if not Keith Miller).

Anyway. Australia, at home, looks long odds-on. And it’s a shame we won’t see Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard, among others. But ... those that are touring, there is a little bit about them. For when you watch Sunil Narine confuse a batsman, Kemar Roach bowl bone-breakers at top-liners, and Holder stand up and lead, you know they could once again be a very good cricket team.