Cozier T: A Trying time for the Caribbeans (Dec 94)

A Trying time for the Caribbeans

Tony Cozier

Whether it is the weakest West Indies team ever to come to India is a moot point, but there is no doubt that the one under Courtney Walsh has been the most harassed - by a long way.

Even before it was chosen, its strength was undermined by Richie Richardson`s worrying illness that denied it not only the captain who had instilled it with the spirit and self-belief that brought it suc- cessive triumphs over South Africa, Australia, Pakistan and England but also one of its most essential batsmen. Every day after that, it seems, some new tnbulation would crop up to test its patience and its resolve.

With Richardson out, Desmond Haynes, one of the international game`s most seasoned players and premier batsmen, was the obvious choice for the captaincy. Miffed by the way he was approached and lured by the offer of a contract in South Africa, he declared himself unavailable. Almost simultaneously, the West Indies Board was -announcing its suspension of Winston Benjamin, an excellent, if temperamental, all-round cricketer, on disciplinary gnounds.

They were three places impossible to adequately fill but the most devastating withdrawal came after the original 16 were announced, that of Curtly Ambrose. It was as if they had taken calypso out of carnival for it left the attack depressingly fiat. The skyscraping Antiguan had given the West Indies a match- winning thrust for the six years since he had suddenly burst onto the scene, virtually unannounced, and the psychological impact of his sudden unavailability, because of an overworked right shoulder, could only be imagined.

No sooner than that depressing news had broken than there was more as the outbreak of pneumonic plague in western India was relayed into West Indian living rooms iii sensational- ly graphic detail by the international satellite networks. The reaction, based on ignorance but understandable all the same, bordered on the hysterical. There was pressure from high places on the West Indies Board to abandon the tour and, even after the week-long delay allayed some fears, the players arrived anxious and apprehensive.

While they have encountered not a trace of the dreaded plague, and scarcely so much as an upset stomach, they have been repeatedly upset by other distractions. They criss-crossed In- dia for the one-day internationals to play 10 matches in 10 different centres in the first three weeks, more than once their over- all journeys lasting as much as six hours. Twice they had to wake at the crack of dawn br a coach drive to a 9 a. m. start in a far-off stadium.

When they checked in to their Visakhapatnam hotel, most of their kit was flying On to Madras so that the start of their match next morning had to be delayed by three-quarters of an hour. At a press conference prior to the first Test, their sponsorship coordinator, Tony Harford, complained that some of the accommodation had been sub-standard. For the crucial Test itself, one look at the hard, bone-dry pitch raised their sus picions that it was being specially underprepared to suit India`s trio of spinners doubts that were not assuaged by the subsequent realities.

The mysterious appearance of damp bowlers` footholes, supposedly repaired the evening before the third day further fed their mistrust for India were to resume at 11 for three in their second innings and, as a consequence they were to lose 45 minutes of valuable bowling time when the pitch was always at its liveliest.

Beaten in the Test, the subsequent three-day match against Ranji Trophy champions. Bombay at least offered them the chance to re-group to provide those players who needed it addi- tional match practice and to help sort out their best combination for the last two Tests. They wondered why a match against Bombay should have been scheduled for Kozhikode, 500 kilometres away, in a town with no cricketing tradition and were appalled when they got there to find a treacherous pitch and an outfield that resembled a cow pasture on a ground used locally for football, not cricket. When political troubles caused the organisers to abandon the second day, they were at liberty to question - if they had not already done so - whether their tour had not been hexed by some evil spell right fiom the beginning. Their refusal to accept guarantees for their security on the final day was taken as an affront to their hosts, but it had been their hosts who had abandoned the second day on security grounds and reports in the news media were not enough to convince a touring team, holed up in its hotel with instructions not to venture out, that it was worth the risk of parading its players in front of a few thousand potentially volatile spectators in the middle of an open stadium. It had already felt the effects of being pelted with bottles. fruit and other missiles at Green Park in Kanpur and Eden Gardens in Calcutta - and there had been no political tension there. If they were happy to leave Kozhikode, they departed for Nagpur and the second Test with heiehtened apprehension - on two counts.

The previous week. they had been alarmed as had the rest of India and the world, by reports of the death of nearly 120 people in a stampede in the city that also had the potelotial to spark political troulile. Some days later, they were further shocked to read a report in one of India`s leading newspapers, quoting an unnamed official as claiming that the Indian team managenient had instructed that the pitch be specitIly underprepared so as to favour India. Suspicion, not to say para noia, is the occuliational hazz ard of all teams in strange and distant lands and Walsh`s West Indies are not the first. and surely will wont be the last, to feel they are being hard done by. If the truth be known, they have been outplayed by strong confident opponents while their own efforts have been diminished by the failure of their most Influential player, Brian Lara. to reproduce anything like his best form.

It is a sporting truism that a team is only as good as its reserves and it has been obvious that the West Indian reserves this time have been short of required international standards.

For all that, the perforniances have unquestionably been underniined by the many misfortunes thit hive befallen it and the euphoric. but patently unrealistic, talk that this is the best Indian team ever, must be tempered by these considerations. - Tony Cozier

Thanks : Sports Star, Dec 94