Raleigh 'round the West Indies

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY

BC Pires

WHO SEND me to watch West Indies play the ar-- (and a few overs of cricket) at the World Cup qualifiers in Zimbabwe last weekend? West Indies were favourites against Zimbabwe but I knew better than to trust the odds. Or our batting. Or bowling. Or fielding. The worst thing West Indies can have at any stage of a cricket game now is the confidence that they will win easily.

When we were world champions in the 70s, I loved to watch us play England most because England had a special quality: their confidence was so shattered, they could be relied upon to do whatever it would take to lose the game in progress. If they had ten runs to get with ten wickets in hand, they would lose nine wickets for nine runs. If they had to drop three catches in a row, a devilish hat-trick, they would do it twice.

Well, we are England today.

Against Zimbabwe, we dropped three catches that would have lowered the total to the runs we’d already made. Of Zimbabwe’s 268, Sikandar Raza, dropped on one and again on seven, made 68 by himself!

The sheer hope in me made me stick around to hear Shai Hope prevaricate on Saturday but it was my inner masochist that made me watch (what I knew on Saturday) would be Monday’s disaster.

West Indies knew they’d beaten the Netherlands when they made 375 runs. Holland had never made more than 250 before, I think. Similarly, we knew we would win when they needed 205 runs from 125 balls. Even when we allowed that fifth wicket partnership to reach 143 runs, we broke it in style and took two additional quick wickets, leaving them reeling – so we relaxed. We’d already won the game three times by then. We weren’t worried. We could win the game a fourth time.

So they needed 30 runs from the last two overs.

So we put on a spinner to bowl the 49th!

Anyone who watched the super over will not forget it, in the same way that anyone who’s seen footage of the liberation of Auschwitz will never forget it. Batting second, we made eight for two in our six balls. Holland – really Logan van Beek – made 30 from theirs. Jason Holder was smashed for six boundaries, three fours and three sixes, as our super over bowler.

But none of this should be surprising to anyone who’s paid attention to our cricket from beyond the boundary. When we were great, we never had any real understanding of why we were; and, now that we are pathetic, we understand it even less. Certainly our mediocre players, who earn more individually than our great teams combined did, cannot believe they could be beaten by Zimbabwe on a Saturday and the Netherlands the next Monday, no matter how many weekends they are given the same hard lesson.

This all began when we were still very good and Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh were opening the bowling. One Joe Hoad, a white Australian with West Indian roots, gave up the job of WI bowling coach in frustration, when his attempt to institute an instant penalty of 20 push-ups for any bowler who sent a ball down leg side was greeted with murmurs that Massa day was done.

Our cricket is not a thermometer of but a barometer for our nation: our cricket does not reflect how hot we are at any given time but the pressure we are likely to face in the very near future. When our nation was strong – before a Trinidadian prime minister declared that TT was not an ATM for Caribbean nations – and we looked to ourselves (even through the lens of petty jealousies), we played cricket that reflected our strength and self-belief.

Now that our nations are a mess, we should not be surprised that our cricket is, too. In a divided world that don’t need islands anymore, we refuse to see our own brothers and sisters.

So it doesn’t matter who the captain is or who bowls the death over.

West Indies were only ever great when united by an idea bigger than false small-island pride. And we will only ever be great again if we are united by the real idea that these little islands might constitute the foundation of a great civilisation.

Or at least until we play every ball of every game.

BC Pires might as well be peddling tobacco