To paraphrase Michael Holding, the current West Indies players are uncool, off the pace and on the nose. His recently released book, No Holding Back, is not your normal run of the mill book written by an ex-cricketer looking for a payday.
It has the same silk-encased acceleration of Michael Holding – Whispering Death – who was possessed of an outswinger with a hypnotic fatality and the inevitability of cicadas mating.
You cannot manufacture tradition on an assembly line with robots, enacting a mechanical dance and flying sparks, creating an illusion of order.
Michael Holding wants the West Indies to get their house in order. Holding talks about sharing the dressing room with Lloyd, Viv Richards and Malcolm Marshall – the camaraderie in the Windies team of the mid seventies and early eighties.
I asked Michael about the divisiveness in the West Indies and what impact their new coach Otis Gibson would have:
“Otis’ problems won’t have much to do with the divisiveness of Windies politics, it has to do with his ability to get the players to discipline themselves and work towards representing the region.
“And by discipline, I am talking about cricket discipline, doing the hard work necessary to bring out the natural talent they have. Can he motivate them enough to get them to forget all the big bank accounts they possess and concentrate on the game that gave them the big bank accounts.”
The ICC is not spared, either.
Holding resigned from the Technical Committee over the bungling of the forfeited Test. It is all in the book as it happened and is fascinating reading. Talking with The Times recently, he said: ”I can’t say to a young man ‘don’t make a living’, but they need responsible guidance.”
“It is your parents who guide you and in cricket the parents are the boards and the ICC. They need to show some leadership.
“It saddens me that the West Indies captain is allowed to show up one day before a Test series because he is playing for the IPL.”
One gets the impression that the ICC, theoretically the patriarch of all Boards, lives in an Old People’s Home, visited on birthdays and “conscience awakening” moments like “I haven’t walked the dog for a month”
The moral to the story is that the secret is in the process. Not the outcome.
Holding does not do commentary on Twenty20. He does not watch it: “Not one ball. I don’t watch Twenty20. It is dumbing-down cricket. They should find another name for it.”
Holding is scathing in his assessment of Kieron Pollard: “Pollard in my opinion is not a cricketer,” Holding told The Times in a recent interview.
The elite cricketers may all fly Business Class now, but where it matters most, the 22 unforgiving yards, the business end of cricket, they have to earn their bragging rights.
This is a journey of one of the most celebrated cricketers in history. Cricket administrators should make this compulsory reading.
It may just give them a feel for the real game.
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