The living death of West Indian cricket

One of my earliest cricket memories is the fourth Test of the 1988-89 Frank Worrell Trophy in Sydney.

I had but little direct knowledge of the invincible West Indians, but I knew enough to realise that a top seven of Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Richie Richardson, Carl Hooper, Viv Richards, Gus Logie and Jeff Dujon was a daunting one.

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AUSTRALIA VS WEST INDIES: DAY 2 LIVE BLOG

That was before you considered what Malcolm Marshall, Curtley Ambrose and Courtney Walsh could do once they got a ball in their hands.

And so I knew that to make a dent in the West Indian edifice would require a monumental performance from one or more of the beleaguered Australians. In January 1989, the Sydney Cricket Ground witnessed just such a performance. It came from a legendary Australian bowler who had the cunning and subtlety and array of devilish tricks to lay that phenomenal batting order low – Allan Robert Border.

AB, then in the early months of what would be a four-year century drought, paid his way in that particular Test by destroying the Windies with his awkward left-arm dobblers, and proved himself unmatched in cricket history for the uncanny ability to convince great batsmen to slap short, slow balls outside off stump straight to cover.

With 7-46 in the first innings and 4-50 in the second, the man who could stand up to West Indian bowlers like no other Australian showed he could also knock over West Indian batsmen like no other.

It was one of the more humiliating episodes in the Windies’ golden age, but in a way it was also one of the best indicators of their greatness.

In those days normal cricketers playing normal cricket had as much chance of withstanding the Caribbean avalanche as Bill Shorten has of possessing a firm belief. The only way to beat them was to do something wildly unexpected, like giving Border a bowl, or picking a 38-year-old legspinner, or playing in New Zealand.

You couldn’t outplay them, but if you got lucky, every now and then you could confuse them for long enough to snatch a win.

Fast-forward 27 long summers. The memory of that era is as painful for the West Indians who played in it as it is for Geoff Lawson, whose jaw was broken two Tests before Border’s Blitz. The team that was once so powerful it could only be knocked off-balance by an occurrence as unlikely as an 11-wicket haul from Captain Grumpy, now sits around the dressing room wistfully wishing it could unearth a bowler as devastating as Allan Border.

Certainly a few overs from AB would’ve helped the Windies on the first day in Hobart, or at the very least could not possibly have made the situation worse. Some might say nothing could have made the situation worse, but they are obviously wrong.

If David Warner, after cruising to 64 off 61, hadn’t lazily flicked at some legside rubbish before lunch, Australia may have finished the day at 700-2. The tourists can thank the good lord the last two sessions were spent bowling at the relatively sedate blades of Adam Voges and Shaun Marsh. The latter’s father presumably watched the day’s proceedings weeping at the historical vagaries that meant he had to bat against the West Indies of the ’80s and his son gets to bat against the West Indies of 2015.

Geoff Marsh may also see an opportunity for redemption. If he comes out of retirement before this series is over he may get the chance to add a few centuries to his career stats.

It’s not a bad idea really – so many batsmen were traumatised beyond repair by those fast-bowling batteries of a few decades ago, it seems only fair those batsmen are now allowed to return to the Test arena to get a few back. It’d certainly be a great way to make this series more competitive if Australia was forced to pick its 1988 eleven for the second Test.

And who doesn’t want to see Peter Taylor bowl again?

Or maybe it could be the Windies who field the players from a bygone era. Anyone who saw Hobart’s first day must have wondered in passing how old Curtly Ambrose would have to get before he’d be more penetrating than this attack. Hell, I’d back 52-year-old Roger Harper to at least keep the runs down a bit.

What I’m saying, in case you didn’t get it, is that this West Indian team is bad. So bad it’s depressing, and that’s just horrible to think about. A day on which Australian batsmen knock up 438 runs should be an occasion of joy. But what we are discovering this summer is that unlike England, or South Africa, or India, or Sri Lanka, or New Zealand, the West Indies just aren’t funny when they’re humiliated.

It is a terrifying signifier of the depths to which Caribbean cricket has sunk, because any Australian who witnessed Ambrose’s detonation of our nation’s finest at Perth in 1993 would have sworn that day that they could watch West Indians being humiliated every day for the rest of their lives without even feeling bored.

But there it is. Sometimes watching a tyrannosaurus rex sink into quicksand isn’t as entertaining as you thought it would be.

I don’t know what the answer is, or even whether there is one. Maybe the youth of the West Indies are just not interested enough in cricket anymore. Maybe the task of building a sporting team out of a group of sovereign nations is as difficult as it always seemed.

Maybe backbiting, corruption and political chicanery have grown out of control. Maybe it’s all about the greed of elite players, and the team would be in vastly better shape if the stars plying their trade on the T20 circuit were available. Maybe all of these things and more. I don’t know.

But what I fear is that whatever the problem is, it might already be beyond solving. I fear that West Indian cricket is not just in decline, but waiting to be unplugged. I hope these are unjustified fears, but I fear that they are much more rational fears than, say, the one about Shane Watson making a comeback.

Most of all, I fear that the best entertainment to be found in Australia-West Indies Tests this summer will be on YouTube. And that’s a damn shame.