Even if he was careful to chide the reporter that he was “putting me in the spot”, Ramnaresh Sarwan’s comment last week that the West Indies were missing Chris Gayle was a self-evident truth.
Gayle’s cricket will continue to be missed in the upcoming three Tests, and probably further on, unless he and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) hierarchy can behave like grown-ups when they meet during the week to sort out the ridiculous issues that led to his absence in the first place.
A team as short on batting record and experience as the West Indies are at present can only be boosted by an opener with 6 373 runs, two triple hundreds and an average of 41.65 in 91 Tests – and, it might be added, by his handy off-spin bowling.
If Gayle really wants to represent the West Indies, as he says, he needs to accept that he is part of a team of which he is no longer captain, whatever message his cap at the Queen’s Park Oval on Monday was supposed to convey. We will soon know which he chooses.
But Gayle is not the only thing glaringly missing from the West Indies team at present. So too, are basic cricket intelligence and authentic all-rounders, both essential to that elusive revival.
To those can be added settled selection. While India, with several new players waiting their chance, retained the same eleven for the first three ODIs, the West Indies, aiming to construct a team for the future through a policy of rotation, chopped and changed 15.
Not many knew where they stood in the shake-up. Almost criminally, Darren Bravo, their one class young batsman, was omitted from the last two matches.
Selection has nothing to do with the knack of properly assessing the state of play and the grasp of individual responsibility that were most evident, although not confined to, the wild shots by set batsmen in the second ODI at the Queen’s Park Oval Wednesday.
Lendl Simmons and Marlon Samuels emerged from the same age-group system. By all early signs, they should, by now, be constants in the West Indies team. The reasons they aren’t were again on show. On the best batting pitch for the season, a team with a highest total of 230 in 12 previous completed innings in Tests and ODIs was in cruise control at 124 for one in the 27th over.
Simmons, a batsman in his most consistent form at international level, had just passed his fifth half-century in seven ODIs and was involved in a partnership of 67 off 14.4 overs with the recovering Sarwan.
India were using their fifth bowler, the unthreatening off-spinner Yusuf Pathan who had already gone for 24 in 3.5 overs. Any schoolboy would have been aware that all that was needed was more of the same. A sizeable total loomed.
Instead, Simmons chose not so much to move down the pitch to Pathan as to charge him as an enraged bull might a red cape. The Indian didn’t require the quick wit of a matador to execute the kill, simply the option open to even a club bowler.
He fired his delivery so far down leg-side it was a clear-cut wide even as it left his fingers.
It duly passed the flailing Simmons into the gloves of the waiting wicket-keeper for the notation on the scoresheet, “stumped Patel”. “Run out” would have been more appropriate.
Simmons has been a gifted batsman since he first represented the West Indies at under-15 level. Precisely because of such indiscretions, his appearances for West Indies have been spasmodic.
He has come back this season after a year on the outside, the case for his return argued strongly by those who recognise his talent. At this stage of his career, he surely appreciates that hundreds are the goal of any set batsman, not 50s and 60s and certainly not by gifting his wicket – as he had also done in Monday’s match with another telegraphed advance as the bowler delivered.
As Simmons trudged back to the pavilion, heading in the opposite direction was Samuels, a pea from the same pod.
As a teenaged prodigy, he only needed to caress a cover-drive or stroke one back past the bowler to set the pulse racing. Yet, aged 30, he averages only 28 from 29 Tests.
Like Simmons, he has repeatedly gone through the revolving door of the West Indies team. Like Simmons, if for an entirely different reason, he is returning after an even longer lay-off, a reinstatement after two years based on a heap of regional runs.
He battled to shake off the rust in the ODIs against Pakistan and missed out for the first Test. Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s late withdrawal with a shoulder complaint got him into the second.
His first innings top score of 57 was a careful knock on a difficult pitch. It hinted at a more mature approach – until he hoisted a catch to long-off, presumably convinced that he had to make the most of things since those to come weren’t capable of hanging on. As it turned out, Nos. 9 and 10, Ravi Rampaul and Kemar Roach, added 60 once he was gone.
Fast forward to Wednesday. By now, Samuels was in confident mood, following another half-century in the first ODI against India.
All the effortless strokes that set him apart from the rest were on display. “Poetry in motion” was how it was described on television by Jeffrey Dujon, a batting poet himself.
Then, like Simmons before him, Samuels decided that Pathan was ripe for the taking. He belted him for four, then six but the warning lights were flashing next ball when another attempt at a maximum spiralled off the edge and luckily landed in open space.
Oblivious to the danger, or the position of the game, Samuels waltzed down the pitch next ball in that languid way of his, missed and Patel duly completed another “run out”. So 175 for two became 175 for three and the West Indies collapse that never seems far away followed.
The upshot was another loss, not because this weakened Indian team is any better but because of rank carelessness. It is a recurring theme. It hasn’t been helped by the present dearth of players capable of scoring a hundred – or, in the present West Indies context, even 50 – and reaping five or four wickets in an innings.
If captain Darren Sammy’s batting means he doesn’t fit the bill, Dwayne Bravo did genuinely qualify with hundreds and five and four wickets returns in Tests and ODIs in his early years. Now, given his declining returns and his lack of confidence, he no longer merits the status.
At 28, with the experience of seven years international cricket, West Indies cricket can’t afford to lose him, especially as the only one at present with such potential appears to be Andre Russell, as he showed in the World Cup and again with his measured approach and spectacular hitting in the third ODI yesterday.
The lower order cries out for such an all-rounder – but then there is the further problem of how to fit him into any starting eleven.
