Being Outside Cricket

In the not too distant past, an upcoming tour to the West Indies would have garnered a lot of noise and a lot of media attention in the build up to the series. Fortunately or Unfortunately, I was not old enough to witness the almost unbeatable West Indies sides of the late 70’s and 80’s, though they had a pretty handy side during the 90’s though probably not quite on the level as their predecessors and hence there would naturally be a lot of excitement about such a tour coupled with a lot of trepidation from the fans (and probably the players) about facing such a strong side in what used to be a trial of pace on quick, bouncy wickets. I have not so fond memories of Messer’s Ambrose & Walsh destroying the English batting line, with the 46 all out in Trinidad during the 3^rd Test in 1994 being the nadir. I remember Lara destroying the English bowling unit time after time and stroking the ball to all and every part of the ground, and it was not just Lara, but also the likes of Carl Hooper, Jimmy Adams, Richie Richardson and a certain young chap called Chanderpaul who regularly put England to the sword. I clearly remember the grubber that Hooper bowled Hussain with, the unplayable pitch at Sabina Park in 98, which even with my medium paced dobbers, I’d have fancied taking a few wickets on and then in 2004 the famous Harmison 7-12 bowling spell back at Sabina Park in 2004.

When I was growing up in the late 80’s and early-mid 90’s, the West Indies were most people’s favourite cricket team aside from England and certainly each series was seen on a similar footing to the Ashes with similar expectations that we were likely to get a hammering in the series. It didn’t matter though, because the West Indies bought their own culture, their own flair and of course a fair share of world class talent to each series and even now I wish that I had managed to find a way to afford a West Indies tour in the late 90’s/early 200’s. There are still those out their that claim the standard of Test cricket hasn’t gone down and that averages of those bowlers and batsmen have improved due to better skill, better train and more longevity in the game. This tends to be the fall back answer from most Sir A. Cook apologists though I would personally have loved to see how he fared against Holding, Garner, Ambrose, Walsh or Marshall – not very well I would guess. I could also say the same for Jimmy and not having to bowl to the likes of Sir Viv, Haynes, Greenidge, Richie Richardson, Lara etc. which would probably merit similar results. The West Indies teams of the 70’s, 80’s and mid 90’s are the type of team we’ll never get to see again in our lifetimes, which is reflects terribly badly on the WICB, ICC and the whole of International cricket and something us true cricket fans continue to mourn.

This brings me back to the upcoming Test series, which unless you were really studying social media or sky, might have passed you by as starting tomorrow. Sure there are no Lara’s or Ambrose’s of the world still playing for the West Indies, but the lack of coverage of what used to be a marquis series up until a few years ago is truly astounding. Then again, perhaps it really isn’t astounding at all. The WICB are skint and incompetent and have struggled to find any sort of world class talent in their ranks for a number of years and generally those that they do find who are international class are normally hounded out by the board or prefer to take the money that the various domestic T20 tournaments can offer. As for England, we have an administration that is so focused on getting a white elephant form of the game through (so much so, that I can barely call it cricket) to supposedly attract new fans to the game, when all of the international and county fixtures are behind a paywall and lost to the masses coupled with the depth of newspaper and magazine journalism is at it’s weakest in living memory. Sure I can hardly call the likes of Mike Selvey, Derek Pringle and Stephen Brenkley investigative journalists as they generally wrote around whatever suited their agenda or in particular the agenda of the ECB, but at least they were writing to a national audience about the sport. Nowadays aside from the likes of Nick Hoult, George Dobell, Ali Martin and Lawrence Booth in his Wisden role there are no other cricket dedicated, serious journalists left in the national eye (anyone who claims Paul Newman, Dean Wilson & John Etheridge are serious journo’s needs their head examined, I mean would readers of the 2 papers said latter people write for really notice if they weren’t there?). Anyway I digress. The main point here is that cricket is becoming such a niche sport that in a few years time will anyone be on hand to write to about it? This is not meant as a slight on the individuals that play for the England team. I think many are talented just not at a world class level, and naturally they still train as hard as ever to keep their places in the side and there certainly don’t seem to be as many ‘dickheads’ floating around as previous tours gone by (Stuart Broad naturally excepted), but I do really find it difficult to both identify with and even like. Maybe it’s just me, but their disappearance from the national eye coupled with the malicious incompetence of our own governing board leaves me very ‘meh’ these days, which is probably another reason why our output on the blog has gone down over the last 6 months or so.

England go into the first Test as strong favourites for the series and thankfully Colin Graves has been locked away in his cupboard to prevent giving the opposition so more motivation to perform, though Geoffrey Boycott seems to have weighed in on his behalf, let’s just hope the West Indies don’t read the Telegraph! Though England are favourites for the series, I don’t see it being all one way whatsoever as recent past tours to the Caribbean can attest to, as the West Indies can still perform above their level on their day. Shai Hope is a talent and I personally think Royston Chase will have a good series, meanwhile with the ball the West Indies have a couple of quick but very inconsistent fast bowlers as well Jason Holder, who is one on those players who has sucked every ounce of his talent out to be successful in Test cricket and someone I hold in high stead given the way he has handled the basket case that is the WICB.

As for England, they would have hoped that with the modified duke ball, they would have been able to go with their preferred balance of four quicks and a single seamer for the majority of the series with the view that they should be able to do more with the Duke ball than they would with the kookaburra. Having said that the England team having seen the state of the pitch in Barbados, which looks like it had animals grazing on it only a couple of days ago, might well be favoured to go with 2 spinners. One would imagine that the top 7 from the final Test in Sri Lanka will probably be in place for the whole series barring injury or a complete loss of form and one would imagine that Jimmy, Broad and Stokes will be the mainstay of the fast bowling attack with Moeen favoured over Leach should England go with one spinner. The final call I would imagine would be the inclusion of Sam Curran, who has already shown his maturity and aptitude for Test cricket and would be terribly unlucky to miss out or Leach if they think the pitch will take turn later on in the game. Naturally I would very much like to see Sam Curran included in the final XI, but not if it harms England’s ability to put their best side out with regards to how the pitch will play.

Naturally, we will try to cover each day’s play throughout the series, but that might mean that some reviews are posted the next morning (or not at all if we’re all tucked up) owing to the late finishes. Please feel free to comment below with your thoughts on the game or anything I have commented on above…