West Indies needs Caribbean magic

THE EDITOR: The prevailing narrative now surrounding the WI cricket team at the T20 International World Cup in Australia is that if the leadership and players do not now produce Caribbean magic, in the form of flawless cricket, following their 42-run thrashing by minnows Scotland on Monday, they may not qualify for the group stage of the competition.

This is because one does not need to have a gift like Nostradamus’s to be certain that unless key changes are made immediately to the attitude and performance of the WI team it will be defeated by Zimbabwe and Ireland and sent packing in shame.

A short time ago this would have seemed to be unthinkable but now our vulnerabilities in both bowling and batting have been made widely known to the cricketing world.

Scotland knew of them before the coin was tossed. The players were fully aware that our bowlers could not bowl economically enough to restrict them to an indefensible total and our batters could not maintain a run-scoring momentum without losing regular wickets to defeat them.

Only former WI all-format cricket captain Jason Holder managed to escape the wisdom of the Scotsmen as he bowled at an economy rate under five runs an over and managed to put almost 40 runs on the board in quick time, which is excellent for a fast-bowling all-rounder at the T20I World Cup.

Apart from Holder, nobody else in the WI squad put in a decent shift with either bat or ball on the sport’s biggest stage. But what is perhaps the most distressing thing about the manner of the WI’s defeat to Scotland is that the players were clearly out of their league, apart from Holder, and were totally at sea versus spin, with which the Scots intelligently opened their bowling.

Manager Phil Simmons is famously called “the motivator” around the world, but for the WI to now avoid defeat again in the remaining qualifiers he would have to pull a rabbit out of the proverbial hat to beat both Zimbabwe and Ireland resoundingly enough to improve our embarrassing run rate and hope the shrewd Scotsmen slip up.

Without this Caribbean cricket magic, the WI surely be on a plane home soon.

FITZROY OTHELLO

Princes Town

Editor's note: The WI is halfway to the miracle with victory yesterday against Zimbabwe