WI display Test cricket at its finest

WEST INDIES manufactured a win against Bangladesh on Sunday at Chattogram that has left the cricket world stunned.

West Indian fans had a rare moment to celebrate a superb victory engineered by tall, robust left-handed batsman Kyle Mayers of Barbados. His accomplishment of a personal score of 210 not out ensured that WI got to their target of 395 to win in the final session of the last day of the first Test match of the two-Test series in the Asian country.

Nothing short of fantastic was this performance. It was Test cricket at its best; tough, unrelenting, frustrating. It required deep thought, constructive application with a confident outlook, an affirmative frame of mind and endless optimism.

The home team had expected to be the winners when they declared their innings closed at 223 for eight wickets, posting a target of 395 for the WI to succeed, confident in the knowledge that this second-rated team of newcomers and youthful inexperience would have no chance in achieving this target.

I also thought that this goal was beyond them, disappointment over the years culminating in gross negativity. This objective, to me, was beyond the capability of these greenhorns. Nonetheless, I thought the tour would do them good in the long run by giving them an insight into Test cricket, gaining experience to place them in sound positions of development for the future.

However, closely observing the approach and batsmanship of Mayers and Nkrumah Bonner, a Jamaican, I began noticing the latent ability lying deep in WI cricket, awaiting the right moment for the inspiration to perform.

What has been lacking and absent for a long time has been the courage to think like winners and the character to confidently assure oneself that one can pursue a goal once the focus is there.

I saw those attributes clearly in Mayers and Bonner as they struggled on in the pre-lunch session of the final day on a testing pitch which possessed variable bounce and sharp turn. It was a difficult wicket to bat on in both innings.

Examining the way the batsmen concentrated on every delivery, I believed they possessed the right approach; nevertheless, I still thought that the target was a bridge too far for these debutants plus other batsmen quite short of experience.

Mayers never stopped playing his shots and was outscoring Bonner two to one. This is when the maturity of the Jamaican got to me. He played for the team and allowed his prolific partner to get on with it without being a little bit bothered. I could not help thinking that this is the mettle of which cricketers are made. It’s a team game and the team’s objective must always come first.

And that is why I was disappointed in experienced New Zealander Ross Taylor’s advice to Joshua Da Silva in the second Test in New Zealand, that he ought to have taken the run to get his 50. The young wicketkeeper, playing in his first Test match, did the right thing by turning down the single that would have got him his 50 in order to keep the lower-order batsman off the strike. It was the correct decision and a very mature one. The team always comes first.

As for Da Silva, both innings of this Test proved to me that he possesses remarkable cricket intelligence and knowledge in his approach. He partnered with Jermaine Blackwood to put on 99 runs for the sixth wicket, then comes in the second innings and shares a vital partnership with Mayers of 100 runs. It’s hard to believe that this is only his second Test match. He got 42 and 20, but the steadiness, the self-assurance in difficult conditions, must have been a great assistance to the Barbadian. Da Silva fed him the strike at all times thus maintaining the flow of the innings.

This is called teamwork. And this team seems to understand the meaning of it.

Credit must go to skipper Kraigg Brathwaite and coach Phil Simmons, who must have passed on encouraging words from their own experiences.

However, one’s audience must be willing listeners to hear and understand, to carry out their functions. I admire the efforts of this team. The willingness of Shannon Gabriel, the plugging away of Rahkeem Cornwall’s off-breaks and Jomel Warrican’s slow left-arm orthodox stuff.

And the cricket continues, without the mercenaries.

The game is always greater than the individual.