WINDIES NEED MENTAL FORTITUDE

Many across the region are still seething over how the West Indies were ‘booted’ from the ICC Cricket World Cup this week.
The West Indies were embarrassed going down by 10 wickets to a Pakistan team that seems to be finding their rhythm at the right time. The West Indies, on the other hand, seem to find new ways to lose each time they step out onto the field.
On a pitch on which our bowlers were unable to get one Pakistani wicket, their batsmen raced to the 112 needed to win off just over 20 overs.
So what went wrong? The team prepares well. The players are fit and there is genuine talent in the team, so why is it that the moment pressure is applied, this West Indies team plays like a high school team playing against Australia?
The problem, I feel, is all mental.
The minute one of the top batsmen gets out, no matter what the score, no matter the circumstance, there seems to be a collective wave of panic that grips the individual players, turning them into zombies who are incapable of thought or reason. It’s almost like a communal brain freeze.

It seems to be that focus must now be placed on finding ways to get this team mentally tough. Right now this team is as mentally tough as soap suds and in an increasingly difficult world of high-level cricket, this is not acceptable.

From Chris Gayle’s T20 approach to the first few balls he faced to Sarwan playing like he was batting to save a Test, most of the players came into the game apparently forgetting whatever the game plan was. So they marched in, so they marched out. Sixteen for three soon became 71 for seven, before Chanderpaul and Roach managed brief resistance. By then, however, it was way too late.
What is certain is that the mindset among the players have to change. Its easy to cast blame at the selectors, administrators and everyone else, but the players, once selected have to go out there and perform. That is what they are paid to do. Gayle is consistent in that he gets one big score per tournament and then disappears, Pollard is a hit or miss player, Sarwan’s mind is definitely not on cricket and Chanderpaul may have played one year too many. For players like Bravo it was just the law of averages catching up to him as well as he being infected by whatever ails the senior players.

The Darren Sammy experiment is now failing and Otis Gibson can try to deny it all he wants but much of the blame has to be shouldered by his captain. For the most part this world cup Sammy has underperformed and he has failed to motivate his team. Sammy’s play has been underwhelming and now that the novelty of him being named captain has worn off, well…we are all now seeing the results of another failed experiment.
All this aside though, what we are also seeing is that for all the physical attributes the players possess, they lack the ability to get the most out of their talents when it matters most.
Someone once said that success in sport is 95 per cent mental and they are 100 per cent correct. Players like Australia’s Ricky Ponting and India’s Sachin Tendulkar, didn’t become greats just by making a lot of runs in all forms of the game, they made many of those runs when it really mattered. Who is that player in the West Indies? It used to be Chanderpaul but his talents are evidently on the wane now, so who else? No one. That’s because there is no player there that is endowed with that level of self-belief that will impose his will on a situation and by doing so transform the fortunes of the team.
As long as there are no players like that in the team, we fans are going to have to get used to getting angry like we did this week. It’s either that or we totally give up on the sport in the region.