- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
My first cricket experience watching the game of cricket was very special. I can remember it like it was yesterday.
It was the 1975-76 Test cricket series between a young emerging West Indies against the all conquering Australians.
Sitting at home watching the first Test on ABC, I can still see the West Indies’ batting line-up capitulating to those great Australian fast bowlers in Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, while seeing Greg Chappell make a 100 in each innings in his first Test as captain, being well supported by brother Ian and Alan Turner.
I will never forget Roy Fredericks and Clive Lloyd smashing the Australians into submission at the WACA in Perth and then a young Viv Richards starting his record breaking calendar year of almost 1800 Test runs with some wonderful innings in the last two Tests of the series as the Windies slumped to a 5-1 defeat.
They had some tremendous players in that side with several of them keys in their eventual dominance of the game in the late 1970s and ’80s. Richards and very young greenhorns in Gordon Greenidge and Michael Holding to support Lloyd, Alvin Kallicharran and star fast bowler Andy Roberts and veteran wicket keeper Deryck Murray.
When Fredericks retired, there was a seamless transition with the inclusion of Desmond Haynes. He and Haynes went onto become one of the most successful opening partnerships ever.
Kallicharran was replaced by a lookalike left-hander in Larry Gomes and Jeff Dujon with his batting became one of the world’s best keepers.
However, the real strength of that side was the battery of fast bowlers. Lloyd saw what Lillee and Thomson did to his side in 1975-76 and decided four fast bowlers was the right recipe for his bowling attack.
They had Roberts and Holding, who had that magnificent run up and approach to the wicket that you couldn’t hear, hence the nickname, whispering death, the giant Joel Garner and the awkward style of Colin Croft.
Fast bowlers were everywhere in the Caribbean in those days. One of their greatest, if not the best of them, the late Malcolm Marshall, arrived on the scene in the early ’80s and then Joel Garner’s seven foot replacement, Curtly Ambrose, joined the fray just after the durable Courtney Walsh.
When Lloyd and Gomes retired two more quality left-handed batsmen became stars in the brilliant, Brian Lara and the reliable Shiv Chanderpaul, who is still playing today, joined soon after by another leftie, the explosive Chris Gayle.
However, talking of now, cricket in the West Indies is in pretty poor shape and getting worse by the minute.
They have been pretty disappointing in this World Cup so far, except for a couple of good days, one of them against another major disappointment in Pakistan, who had the talent but not the togetherness to challenge the powerful Windies in the ’70s and ’80s.
The other good day was when Chris Gayle had a day out exploding with 215 against Zimbabwe, but he didn’t fire a shot in matches with South Africa and India and they were well beaten.
There is a distinct lack of talent and depth coming through with those tall boys, who would have chosen cricket like Garner, Walsh and Ambrose in the Halcyon era electing basketball among other sports.
There is also a lack of structure and planning at administrative level and to make matters worse the players and the board are not on the same page.
They had to cancel a tour recently of India, with the players furious about their renumeration or lack of it and then the board added insult to injury by not allowing important players in Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard and spinner Sunil Narine to play in the World Cup.
Bravo was the players’ representative in the Indian dispute and administrators obviously have long memories.
There have been plenty of examples where Bravo, Gayle and Pollard have missed tours for their country to get the big bucks in Twenty20 competitions around the world, because of the monetary value on offer compared to what was being offered by the West Indies cricket board.
Bravo, Pollard and Narine would have been excellent additions in this side and given them more depth and experience, especially in the case of Pollard and Bravo, who would strengthen what is for this World Cup, outside Gayle and maybe Darren Bravo, a fairly threadbare batting line-up.
Cricket in the West Indies after such a wonderful era for almost 20 years has been going downhill since the mid 1990s. There doesn’t seen to be enough hard work done for everyone to be on the same page to provide the building blocks for them to one day be a force again.
Ireland beat them in their first match in this World Cup and that wasn’t a major surprise. With the greatest respect to the Irish, who are improving all the time, they don’t have Test status yet, so it just shows how much the mighty have fallen.
Build your own fantasy cricket team and put it to the test with Draftstars daily fantasy competitions. Pick your match, pick your team and watch the points roll in to take out cash prizes on each match. What are you really gambling with? Set a deposit limit.