Home truth: Cricket decline due to poor standards in West Indies (10 January 1999)

10 January 1999

Home truth: Cricket decline due to poor standards in West Indies

By Tony Cozier

CAPE TOWN - Brian Lara alluded to it after the West Indies defeat in last week's fourth Test and Malcolm Marshall repeated it yesterday.

Like the captain, the team coach sourced the recent West Indies' decline to the lowering standards in the Caribbean itself.

"I believe the standard of the cricket back home has dropped somewhat," Marshall said. "You won't find many guys now able to bowl a consistent line and length and make batsmen work for their runs.

"On the other hand, you have batsmen who bat for an hour and have already gone 40 runs and that's shown up here in South Africa, like it did in Pakistan (last year) and Australia (in 1996-97)," he added.

"When pressure is applied by bowlers who bowl a continual good line and length, we tend to go after the ball instead of putting our heads down and building an innings."

Marshall said there were not many bowlers in the West Indies now who swung the ball consistently, so the batsmen were found out when they confronted those from other countries who did.

"We played in Pakistan on some of the best pitches I've seen there but we fell down because the ball actually swung," he said.

"It wasn't the pace that troubled our batsmen there but swing, allied to good line and length, and the same thing has happened here."

Marshall advocated that up-and-coming West Indian batsmen spend a season or two in England, either with counties or in the leagues, for them to "get accustomed to the ball moving around.

"We still have plenty of natural talent, you can see it everywhere, but we've got to channel it properly all the way through the system," he said.

A coach for Natal for four years before taking up his position with the West Indies, Marshall said South African teams and players "work very hard" at their cricket.

"They have a regime over here for each province and you've got to stick by it," he said. "You've got the support of the unions (boards). But with the West Indies, the players go back to their respective territories and they play and I don't know how hard they work as a unit.

"What happens then is that a lot of players come on tours to play Test cricket with minor mistakes, things that should be rectified before they reach this stage. I've seen that on this tour and others before it.

"I said before I took over the coaching role that I'm not a miracle man," he stressed. "I can help players where they've got problems; but for someone to come on a tour with five, or six, or seven mistakes, and on a very hard tour like South Africa where they're not too many side games, I can't correct everything over a short period of time."

Marshall made the obvious point that the West Indies had been badly exposed by the South Africans in the field.

"You've got to work very hard on fielding drills," he said. "In the past, the West Indies were natural fielders and we took it for granted. But it takes work to maintain standards, and not work simply on tour, but through a set regimen.

"We have been at a disadvantage here because we have a lot of guys who don't have very good arms because they've got chronic shoulder injuries."

When he retired from international cricket in 1992, Marshall publicly warned of the indiscipline that was creeping into the West Indies team. Six years later, as coach, it is something that still concerns him.

"I don't think a lot of players actually realise how important it is to play for the West Indies," he said. "I don't think they appreciate how much work was put in by those four heroes - Sir Frank Worrell, Sir Garry Sobers, Clive Lloyd and Sir Viv Richards, to get us where we are.

"When you got into those teams, you had to perform not only on the field but off the field as well," he added.

"We've also got to bring discipline back to the batting and bowling," he said. "Even though we may not have as great a team as Clive's for a long time, we still have talented players and, once they are disciplined in every area of the game, the West Indies team will be strong again."

Source :: The Barbados Nation (https://www.nationnews.com/)