Sport is close to its most watchable when a David looks like bringing down a Goliath. Conversely, it is close to its most unwatchable when the lesser team never looks like being David and gets crushed.
Apart from humiliation, all there is for that lesser team is the darkness, with a dim light in the distance.
For such teams, such as the current West Indies side, an important step in their development is their line-in-the-sand moment.
Not because their fortunes will immediately rise; believing that to be true would be to uncritically accept a narrative fallacy. The importance of a line-in-the-sand moment comes from its potential to separate uncontrollable factors from controllable factors, conflation which appeared rampant in the West Indian team at Bellerive.
The most obvious symptom of that conflation, and the player who received the most criticism, was Marlon Samuels.
Many criticised Samuels for not caring, and his body language certainly didn’t provide a quick rebuttal. Mitchell Johnson is about the only high-profile former Australian player who defended him thus far, arguing that Samuels playing in the Frank Worrell Trophy instead of the Big Bash League is evidence of his commitment to Test cricket.
Samuels may or may not care. Short of a mind-reading device or, whisper it, actually asking them, certainty about what’s inside the complex world of another human being’s brain is impossible to find, like a good reason for Nathan Lyon’s continued absence from international white-ball cricket in spin-friendly conditions.
We outside observers are measuring Samuels against our own subjective criteria. What is much more relevant is how Samuels is measured in his own dressing room.
How do his leadership qualities as a senior player compare with former teammates, such as Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Brian Lara, Jimmy Adams and Courtney Walsh? What things are definitely under his control that he isn’t doing, but should be doing?
I was in the crowd for both days of Australia’s innings, on the hill. Criticising Samuels for where he was fielding is unfair, as the captain is the ultimate source of authority, not a rock-paper-scissors player.
Criticising Samuels for having his hands in his pockets is to ignore that players from both sides were shoving their hands in their pockets because of the cold.
What was fine for 21 other players and two umpires was fair game for Samuels, as it was a kind of clincher to people’s arguments. You know, ‘He’s not helping his captain, he’s fielding on the boundary,’ and then, to finish, ‘he’s always got his bloody hands in his pockets’.
So, time to address the much more convincing part of the argument – he’s not giving young, overburdened Jason Holder, enough.
After the first day, I argued on The Roar that the depressing performance of the West Indies, in which there was “little energy… little voice and horrible body language” raised questions for Samuels, among others. I wondered what they were doing to improve the situation, to lift the intensity.
I stand by that article. But it’s one thing to say what’s wrong, and another to say what should be done instead.
Just to be clear, what I was arguing for was a mindless repetition of well-worn slogans such as, ‘One brings two’, yelled in a voice of forced cheerfulness, at any random moment. Call me a contrarian, but I’ve always found that sort of thing about as inspiring as looking at the spine of a dictionary.
Rather, neither Samuels nor any other senior player used occasional pieces of good fielding as an opportunity to verbally and physically get among other players. As well as Adam Voges and Shaun Marsh batted, no batsman can prevent that sort of leadership, where a fielder can lead even a temporary rise in the intensity.
What makes Samuels more culpable than anyone else is that he wasn’t even buzzing around with intent when he fielded the ball. Body language is important, and while other people’s perception of body language can’t be controlled, intent is an entirely within that player’s control, and a non-negotiable. The lack of intent was what made Samuels look like a junior player, not a senior player.
When he eventually batted at Hobart, Samuels continued to disappoint. Of course, how well the ball is bowled – and he received a beauty in the second innings – is out of his control. More dismissals like the first innings dismissal at Hobart and other options, as much as they have been sapped by the current problems facing West Indian cricket, will have to be tried.
Senior batsman status has to be continually proven through runs, not just by default by being the oldest in the team. For those reasons, he has to make a line in the sand.
Of course, Samuels is only one man and he’s not the captain. It is Holder who currently has one of the toughest jobs in cricket. It’s hard to avoid feeling sympathy for the captain of a lesser team that is incapable of pulling off a David over Goliath victory. He’s starting the job of improving the West Indies from a long way back, even further back than the abyss Australian cricket had to be dragged out from by Allan Border.
When Border took over the Australian captaincy from an overwhelmed Kim Hughes in 1984, Australia were the lesser team but not David against the West Indian Goliath. Border had been given a mountainous, ten-year challenge to build a slingshot, as he was the only man in a position to do so.
However, Border did so with the benefit of having played under three Test captains and notched 63 Tests that had established him as one of the world’s leading players behind.
Since Holder is younger than what Border was when he became captain, Holder could feasibly captain the West Indies for even longer than ten years, and is the only option to captain the side.
His predecessor, Denesh Ramdin, is only 30, but he struggled like Hughes during captaincy and has struggled as much as… well, Hughes after captaincy.
Holder may be one of the most promising young players in the world, but he’s not yet an established player, and had played eight Tests before he was made captain. Mitchell Marsh is also a promising all-rounder, and Michael Clarke has suggested he has the qualities to captain Australia one day, but that day will only ever come after he’s well and truly established himself as a Test cricketer and earned his way up the potential leadership queue.
Holder may be the only choice, but he has to make his name as a Test player while simultaneously captaining the West Indies. The weight on his shoulders is immense and he will need help and leadership from the West Indies Cricket Board.
Hughes wasn’t the right person to captain Australia and he made many mistakes. But the weight on his shoulders due to factors outside his control was immense. The sad parallel between Hughes and Holder is that the support from the Australian Cricket Board for Hughes was insufficient.
The consequence was that Hughes tearfully resigned from the Australian captaincy on November 26, 1984. It was a very low day for Australian cricket. Importantly, it was also a line-in-the-sand moment.
The person who read out the rest of Hughes’ resignation speech was team manager Bob Merriman. He had one of the closest views of what happened to Hughes. It had a consequence.
It meant that when the job looked like it might be about to overwhelm Border, such as when he threatened to quit after defeats to New Zealand, the administrators looked to help their captain. Bob Simpson was appointed coach and an academy was set up, among other things.
Border gradually improved, and the force of his personality became such that one shudders at how he would have reacted had a bowler said that they refused to bowl into a strong, which is reportedly what happened at Bellerive.
No, the ACB wasn’t perfect. Yes, there was still much tension between the administrators and the players – the ACA/ACB dispute and the years of build up to it is evidence of that. But it is possible to go back and look at November 26, 1984, as a line-in-the-sand moment for the administrators, who said that no repeat of Kim Hughes could ever be allowed.
For the Australian players, a single moment is harder to identify. The tied Test perhaps?
Anyway, Holder will need that kind of support, as he grows as a captain on and off the field. Nothing about West Indies cricket history suggests he will receive that from the West Indies Cricket Board, even with their approval of the big names in the West Indian support cast. But it’s the only way.
Otherwise, the vicious cycle that has chewed and spat out Holder’s predecessors as captain will consume him, and his successors, until the West Indies are disbanded as a Test entity. Consume good, passionate people. Individually, those resignations may not look as bad as the tearful resignation of Hughes, but cumulatively it is sadder.
The third day of the Hobart Test was December 12, 2015. For West Indian players and administrators alike, it must be the date that a line in the sand was drawn. It can’t be measured by not winning a Test in the series – at the moment Holder’s slingshot is not even made, equipped with substandard ammunition, with other ammunition in a bin labelled ‘Untouchable’.
It can be measured by proficiency in how the West Indies control what is wholly within their control. At Bellerive, they were bad at that. Their deficiency in controlling what they can can’t be allowed to get worse, or even stay at the present level. It needs to get better.
If not, only those with a strong stomach need watch the MCG and the SCG Tests.
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