How did the West Indies develop such a dominant team?

[Scotland]

Ewing was drafted 11 years before their unbeaten streak ended. While he would be known in Jamaica it’s very unlikely his career would have had any impact on the lower interest in cricket over the last quarter century.

Basketball undoubtedly has a presence in the islands but no more than soccer or boxing or sprinting, all of which have produced more than their fair share of decent athletes.

Terrible management and planning and development is running a Winx-like race compared to the other competing factors in the decline

Patrick Ewing was already in the US in 1975.

The biggest threat to WI cricket in recent years has been as you said WI cricket.

We're lucky that we are in the position that our top players can choose to (and want to) focus on test cricket and skip the IPL. Rare for a WI player to do that. I get it, it's a far less wealthy part of the world and the board historically hasn't looked after the players who are now in the position to make a million bucks for two months work. I can barely keep up with who their test/ODI/T20I captains are month to month.

Chris Gayle (2000) was their most recent debut to make it to 100 tests. Most of their better players are short form specialists. They've won the T20 WC twice and their players regularly feature prominently in T20 comps around the world.

For a while it seemed like a higher proportion of Indian rather than African background players were making it to international level (typically from Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana). Did wonder if that was a trend or not, both due to African background athletes being attracted to more athletic sports and the Indian diaspora taking cricket to all corners. I hope they get it together, they still produce talented players with varying skill sets.

 

[PhatBoy]

Awesomely we are on the verge of a series loss to Ireland

 

[Pippen94]

Awesomely we are on the verge of a series loss to Ireland

Hate to see it

 

[PhatBoy]

Hate to see it

That was putrid. The one thing I will say is that Pollard didn’t drop the stock standard ‘we will try and learn from it and improve’ afterwards. He actually called it what it is: unacceptable. Changing lineups every five minutes doesn’t help. Having one of the worlds best seamers in your side and using him fourth change for 3 overs was less than ideal as well.

 

[to1994]

A series loss to Ireland at Home is pretty dire. If it was just a freak occurrence you'd just give credit to the Irish and move on but Windies limited overs cricket really looks on its last legs. There was all the talk about Windies talents choosing T20 over Tests years ago but the fruits of that don't seem to be there the days.

Maybe they need to forget about strike right for now and just focus on putting up consistent scores of 250+.

Nkrumah Bonner who is basically the only consistent international batsmen seems to have an OK List A record, surely can't hurt to include him in the ODI side? Maybe Blackwood as well who plays pretty aggressively in Tests?

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Thanks a lot for the detailed reply! I was actually thinking about this again the other day, because despite the thread being years old, I still haven't watched Fire in Babylon. Will get on that. Really interesting about Packer - I had no idea he had a nuts-and-bolts impact like that.

No worries, you lucked out a bit that a few weeks ago I explained to GremioPower, our Brazilian poster on Port board, the Windies history.

Kerry Packer bet the empire on WSC. He was the "dumb dyslexic son" who was never supposed to take over from Frank Packer. Older brother Clyde was supposed to, but after being CEO of Nine Network for a couple of years, but never being allowed to really run it and publicly being put down by Frank, he had a big falling out with the old man and left the business and the eventually the country. Kerry was put to work in the newspaper and magazines section and he wasn't made part of management, but had to work the nuts and bolts on the printing room floor. Frank gave him a break when Clyde left and he got to run the magazine section - starting with working with Ita Butrose to launch Cleo.

Kerry loved TV and sport, so when Frank died and he took over, that's where he shifted the centre of the empire to. Frank didn't like spending money on producing Oz content, it was cheaper to buy content from overseas production, so Kerry pounced when he was CEO, colour TV was introduced to Oz in 1974, the year Frank died, and Kerry start commissioning more Oz productions. He wanted sport for his network, especially cricket, offered multiple times more than ABC for the rights, but was rejected by the ACB ie Bradman. Cricket was the national sport in the 1970's, there was no national football codes ( well NSL started in 1977 but it was a minor sport).

Packer took on the establishment and he had to win the cricket war or he was potentially stuffed. To do that he had to have his finger on every pulse of WSC. That's why he demanded change from the Windies. He won the war and became all powerful. Hardly anyone took on Kerry Packer after WSC. WSC gave Packer a huge national profile and great political and business, power and influence as it helped make his network #1, and #1 by a large margin for a couple of decades.

 

[footyfan1978]

A series loss to Ireland at Home is pretty dire. If it was just a freak occurrence you'd just give credit to the Irish and move on but Windies limited overs cricket really looks on its last legs. .

The small amount I've seen of Ireland, they actually looked a fairly united and hard working squad so they probably have something a few nations with more talent lack. Being on the same page and no egos.
Not overly surprised.
Type of side that could upset any side on their day if you not switched on.

 

[Jamurp]

How long since the Windies have had a decent test side, 20+ years right? Isn't that crazy to think about? Remember that 2000 series and hoping that one day they might be good again, and over time you realise it just won't ever happen. World cricket is much less without a good Windies side.

 

[PhatBoy]

How long since the Windies have had a decent test side, 20+ years right? Isn't that crazy to think about? Remember that 2000 series and hoping that one day they might be good again, and over time you realise it just won't ever happen. World cricket is much less without a good Windies side.

It depends what you consider decent.

I am probably clutching at straws here but when they don’t play Australia, South Africa, and India, they actually seem to fare as well as the other sides. They drew a home series with Pakistan last year. They beat England last time they hosted them and blew an opportunity to beat them in the first post covid series in England when they led 1-0 and were balls deep in the second test.
They’ve split a heap of home series with Sri Lanka, easily beat Bangladesh, beat Bangladesh away, took a test off Pakistan in the UAE 4-5 years ago.

Maybe why this Ashes was so hard to watch was because England played like the bad version of the West Indies:

• Bowled reasonably well
• dropped catches continually
• shot themselves in their own brain with no ball wickets
• collapsed anytime the blowtorch was applied to their batsmen

This is a snapshot of what the West Indies do every time they look like getting a foothold against a decent opponent. Our ability to give up the initiative is infuriating - we’ve had SA and India in trouble at various junctures in recent times at home but invariably something goes wrong and we piss it away.

 

[footyfan1978]

 

[Cainozz]

It depends what you consider decent.

I am probably clutching at straws here but when they don’t play Australia, South Africa, and India, they actually seem to fare as well as the other sides. They drew a home series with Pakistan last year. They beat England last time they hosted them and blew an opportunity to beat them in the first post covid series in England when they led 1-0 and were balls deep in the second test.
They’ve split a heap of home series with Sri Lanka, easily beat Bangladesh, beat Bangladesh away, took a test off Pakistan in the UAE 4-5 years ago.

Maybe why this Ashes was so hard to watch was because England played like the bad version of the West Indies:

• Bowled reasonably well
• dropped catches continually
• shot themselves in their own brain with no ball wickets
• collapsed anytime the blowtorch was applied to their batsmen

This is a snapshot of what the West Indies do every time they look like getting a foothold against a decent opponent. Our ability to give up the initiative is infuriating - we’ve had SA and India in trouble at various junctures in recent times at home but invariably something goes wrong and we piss it away.

Add in as well the continuous issues players have with the WICB and the inconsistent sides they put out on the park from series to series. Chop and change any side and they are going to be relatively inconsistent. The talent is most certainly there.

 

[PhatBoy]

Add in as well the continuous issues players have with the WICB and the inconsistent sides they put out on the park from series to series. Chop and change any side and they are going to be relatively inconsistent. The talent is most certainly there.

Absolutely, but unfortunately it’s such an ingrained factor now that I just tend to overlook it.

They seem incapable of finding the right balance - I’m all for trying different combinations when the one you’ve got isn’t working. I’m also all for giving players at least enough time to fail a bit before finding their feet.

Two examples of how not to handle it are John Campbell and Devon Smith.

Smith actually was one of the few players tried and discarded who actually did the right thing (Blackwood is another) and went back to domestic cricket and piled joy he runs. It’s unarguable that Smith earned his shots. But they would bring him in, he’d usually fail in his first few tests and then he would be left out again, then rinse and repeat.
With Campbell they went too far the other way. He showed a bit of promise in domestic cricket but was probably picked on suspicion. He was then more or less retained come hell or high water for the best part of two years because he would often see off the new ball. He wasn’t sent back to build on his basic ability and turn it into a high scoring level of batsmanship.

Darren Bravo I saw is in the t20 squad so that’s a slight positive. I am praying they pick him to play tests against England.
A top 6 of Brathwaite, Powell, Bonner, Bravo, Blackwood and Mayers isn’t without a chance of causing England some trouble

 

[Cainozz]

Absolutely, but unfortunately it’s such an ingrained factor now that I just tend to overlook it.

They seem incapable of finding the right balance - I’m all for trying different combinations when the one you’ve got isn’t working. I’m also all for giving players at least enough time to fail a bit before finding their feet.

Two examples of how not to handle it are John Campbell and Devon Smith.

Smith actually was one of the few players tried and discarded who actually did the right thing (Blackwood is another) and went back to domestic cricket and piled joy he runs. It’s unarguable that Smith earned his shots. But they would bring him in, he’d usually fail in his first few tests and then he would be left out again, then rinse and repeat.
With Campbell they went too far the other way. He showed a bit of promise in domestic cricket but was probably picked on suspicion. He was then more or less retained come hell or high water for the best part of two years because he would often see off the new ball. He wasn’t sent back to build on his basic ability and turn it into a high scoring level of batsmanship.

Darren Bravo I saw is in the t20 squad so that’s a slight positive. I am praying they pick him to play tests against England.
A top 6 of Brathwaite, Powell, Bonner, Bravo, Blackwood and Mayers isn’t without a chance of causing England some trouble

That batting line-up certainly looks strong on paper to trouble England in home conditions for sure.

Also, just realised Kraigg Brathwaite is only 29 - feels like he's been around for ages or atleast in his mid 30s by now! As often we have seen batsmen seem to really hit their prime at 30. Perhaps we could be seeing some big runs at the top of the order.

Darren Bravo is someone who've always been excited by. Similar style to Lara - it's crazy to think it never really clicked for him at test level with his early success in India.

 

[Cleavy]

How does modern WI get there? Play England! Currently 5/30 in T20

 

[Bradesmaen]

How does modern WI get there? Play England! Currently 5/30 in T20

6/39.. go England.

 

[PhatBoy]

If there is one team I am ever confident of beating every time we play them in any format, it’s England