Stop insularity in WI cricket

“EVERYONE wants West Indies to win but they all want their own people to play. Until we get rid of that, until we stop filling our local territorial players with nonsense as I call it, then we are not going to get anywhere because we are creating monsters.” Those were the words of the last West Indies coach, Roger Harper, just before he left the job and as he pinpointed “insularity at all levels” as the “biggest problem” plaguing West Indies cricket. The latest bout of this stifling disease to have stung West Indies cricket is the staunch disagreement with the inclusion of Mervyn Dillon and Vasbert Drakes on the tour to South Africa as voiced by cricket writer Tony Becca in his “Yes to Rampaul, no to Dillon and Drakes” piece in the Jamaica Gleaner of Wednesday, October 22.

To question Dillon and Drakes’ inclusion is not unreasonable, indeed it is justified given that Dillon has looked firmly out-of-sorts during his last international engagement and Drakes is just hanging on from series to series without being able to offer West Indies cricket any true long term value. Where the sickening insularity arises is when the case is made for the inclusion of Daren Powell and only Daren Powell, the stealthy Jamaican fast bowler. Championing the cause for Powell’s inclusion too is not an unreasonable position. In the view of this writer he should be in the 16-man squad to Zimbabwe and South Africa as well. Powell seems to have finally smoothened his once jerky run up and is bowling with zeal and genuine pace. What is striking about Becca’s argument though is not so much what he writes, but what he pointedly neglects to write. While Powell did bowl well in the just concluded Red Stripe Bowl it cannot be said that he bowled better than, or even as well as either Dinanath Ramnarine or Dave Mohamed, the Trinidadian spin twins. Ramnarine, participating in Zone A like Powell, finished the tournament as the joint leading wicket taker with 12 wickets. His average of 11.00 was the second best among all bowlers to have taken five wickets or more.

The leg spinner’s strike rate was 19.1, his economy rate 3.44 and he was one of only three bowlers during the entire tournament to have taken a five wicket haul though it was against the no-name Canadians. Above all these figures though was the fact that Ramnarine re-established himself firmly as the best spinner in the Caribbean. He bowled with guile, flight, sharp and prodigious turn and on every occasion befuddled most of  his opponents, in particular the highly touted allstar Jamaican batting line up. Dave Mohamed too made a mockery of the Jamaican batting line up at Sabina Park. Apart from Gareth Breese the Jamaican “Test” batsmen were at sea against his high class left arm spin. Mohamed ended the RSB with seven wickets at an average of 16.85. Powell finished with one wicket more at an average of 21.12. While the RSB would have given some indication of the players’ current form it could not have been the only yardstick by which players were judged. Past performance would also have had to come into bearing when the selectors sat down to select the Zimbabwe squad. And this is where one cannot understand how Becca touts Powell to be on the squad but explicitly refuses to mention Ramnarine in the equation. Lest we forget Ramnarine is a man who has 45 Test wickets from 12 matches while Powell has 12 from 4.

There is no denying that there is a case for Powell to be in the squad to Africa, but not ahead of Ramnarine and probably not ahead of Mohamed either. To champion Powell’s cause without giving these other two deserving young men a single mention reeks of nothing but insularity, vicious and painful. And there can be no argument that we cannot compare Powell as a pacer with these two spinners when Becca himself admits that “the squad appears unbalanced with six pace bowlers.” Perhaps this whole episode should be counted as a monumental gaffe, much like Becca, in the same article, referring to Ravi Rampaul as “a left hander” who will “add another dimension to the attack” when Rampaul is a right handed bowler. But coming on the heels of  him inexplicably and irrationally calling for Brian Lara to have been dropped from the World Cup squad, surely the esteemed Jamaican writer should have known better than to have been this obviously insular. There is much for Becca to learn from Roger Harper’s wise advice, “until we stop filling our local territorial players with nonsense, then we are not going to get anywhere because we are creating monsters.”