EXCITING TIE EXPOSES TROUBLING CONCERNS

Batsmen in the region struggle to score because of a wrong approach to compiling large totals

The West Indies Cricket Board Regional 50-0ver Competition concluded on Sunday with an exciting tie between finalists Barbados and The Leeward Islands.
The Leewards, batting first, were only able to put 139 runs on the board from only 32 overs and five balls of their 50 allotted overs. On paper it seemed like an easy enough target for Barbados which was chasing a total that required a scoring rate of less than three runs per over. Cake walk, right? Wrong! Barbados, through inept batting and absent thinking Barbados collapsed to 139 all out. Absolutely unbelievbale!
Sure, we have seen teams successfully defend low totals many times but these finals and this competition overall has exposed what is wrong with cricket in the West Indies.
Throughout the competition, only once did a team score more than 250 runs. Jamaica managed 285 against the Combined Colleges and Campuses in what was a must-win match for them to get to the semi-finals. Former West Indies captain Chris Gayle and the inconsistent Xavier Marshall both scored seventies in that match to give Jamaica a solid foundation. But even then it  took a 23-ball 46 from Andre Russell to get them to what was the highest total in the competition. This against perhaps the poorest bowlers in world cricket today.
Another disturbing trend is that there was only one century scored in the entire competition. Darren Bravo from Trinidad scored that single century in the opening match of the competition.
What we are seeing in this region are teams that are unable to generate scores above 250 runs from 50 overs when that has become the norm in world cricket. Partially due to the advent of Twenty/20 cricket and more innovative batting, five runs an over is easy for most teams these days; most teams that are not in the West Indies.
The bowling in the region is not that good. Only a handful of bowlers have been standouts but even those bowlers have been proven wanting when compared to the best bowlers from Australia, England, New Zealand, Pakistan and India, Sri Lanka; the best teams in the world.

So against sub-standard bowling most of the teams were able to mount impressive totals on pitches that could have yielded these totals. Batsmen were getting out to reckless shots and their approach to setting and chasing totals left a lot to be desired. We often saw batmen losing their wickets to unnecessary shot making when all that was required was finding gaps in the field to take singles.

It is befuddling how batsmen in this region seem unable to grasp the simple equation that five or six singles an over interspersed with the occasional four or six from poor deliveries can easily get them centuries and their teams 300 runs in 50 overs. Take for example, what happened in the finals. Tino Best and Kemar Roach, two bowlers from Barbados who have represented the West Indies, needed one run from 73 deliveries to win the final. Instead of taking a sensible approach of waiting for the right ball or a wide or a no ball to come along, they went for a suicidal single and ended up throwing away what was a very easy win.

One run from 73 deliveries and they panicked. This is the kind of mental breakdown that has caused many West Indies teams in recent times to lose matches they should have won. What this speaks to is the absence of strategies or if there are, the inability of the players to execute those strategies.

What this boils down to is that there are very grave concerns about the state of the region’s cricket and the players who play the game. Cricket is a thinking man’s game, and if these current players are incapable of strategic thought then we are in for a very long wait before we can return to a time when smart cricket is played in the West Indies.