WI

West Indies needs a new captain, but is someone there?

Around an year ago, a reluctant Chris Gayle had joined back his team in England, which was readying itself to take on the hosts in a Test match series. The reluctance was in most parts, due to the luring away of the captain from the lucre that went by the name of the Indian Premier League and the fuel to the fire was added when he said that he wouldn’t be too disappointed if he lost his captaincy.

One year and a few months on, Gayle has defended his own form, and his captaincy and said that he would love to continue as the leader for the time to come. It has been a complete turnaround, though, one isn’t sure whether he is the right man for the job in the first place. At least at this current moment.

The only factor that goes in Gayle’s favour is that the current set-up does not possess too many leaders in them. Daren Ganga’s captaincy was well received in the Champions League T20 last year, but to expect him to lead the Test match side would be akin to having a non-playing captain in the side. In the 48 Test matches that Ganga has featured in so far, he averages 25, which is far lower than what even an average player is expected to possess after so many games.

Then again, Ganga and the West Indies cricket board have the example of Shahid Afridi, who had even retired from the five day format, but has come back to assume the role of the captain. While the experiment with Afridi at the top in the five day format has yet to begin, the WICB could observe it closely to take notes.

Then again, it is not only the Test matches where there is a sense of consistent loss. In the ODI format, the West Indian side has yet to win a single game against a current Test playing nation out of the last 17 matches that they have played. They did win a series against Zimbabwe 4-1, but that hardly counts given the discrepancy between Zimbabwe and the rest of the sides.

Dwayne Bravo is Gayle’s deputy, but the question is whether the time is ripe to get him in as the skipper. From the team’s point of view, one gets the sense that it cannot get worse than this. Match after match, the side has been panned with one loss after another. However, what could be an issue is with Bravo, the cricketer, himself. Bravo possesses a lot of talent with the bat, and can do his bit of bowling six to eight overs with the ball as well. However, there is always that sense of lack of fulfilment when one looks at his performances over time – falling short of expectations.

An average of 33 in Tests and 25 in the ODIs with the bat, can easily be upped by another five runs an innings, even as he looks to bring down his economy of 5.25 runs per over in the ODIs.

Given this situation, it may not be too prudent to saddle him with the responsibility of the captaincy. Not just now anyhow.

With Shivnarine Chanderpaul having already refused the job and Ramnaresh Sarwan not fit enough to be a part of the playing eleven either, Gayle remains West Indies’ best chance. And that is the sad story of their cricket!

If Benn’s got a red-card, why isn’t Gayle on a yellow?

The soccer fever is all around, with the World Cup approaching. So much so that the Wet Indian captain Chris Gayle has begun envisioning himself as a match referee. And he has begun to send off the players. His own ones that is.

The first time I heard that Chris Gayle had sent off Sulieman Benn after the lanky left-arm spinner had bowled only four overs, I thought to myself, this is some kind of a figment of the media’s imagination. Then, I heard that Gayle had confirmed it. The soccer bug had bitten the skipper and Benn had been red-carded for a supposedly dangerous tackle on the captain himself.

Apparently, Benn had refused to bowl from over the wicket when his captain had demanded him to. By this rationale, both, Harbhajan Singh and Muthiah Muralitharan would probably have lasted not more than a couple of years at the international level; both reluctant bowlers from around the wicket at the start of the innings.

One can be rest assured that the issue was not restricted to this refusal alone. In the past, Benn’s disciplinary record has been anything but exemplary, and one can safely assume that he would have had his share of riling his own skipper, even before this particular incident.

But this also beggars a question about Gayle’s own captaincy. On most occasions, Gayle has come second and so has his side, in the recent times, and a 0-4 defeat to Australia and now, another 0-4 scoreline against South Africa leaves me wondering whether he is the right man for the job. His records suggest otherwise.

In the 17 games that he has led his side in the Tests, West Indies has won in only three. The ODIs get even more appalling, with Gayle leading his side to 17 victories out of the 52 games that he has walked out to toss, but what makes this statistic worse is that nine of these 17 wins have come against Canada, Netherlands, Ireland and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s Prosper Utseya holds a record of 20 wins out of 67 games, including those against Bangladesh, Kenya, Ireland and a couple against West Indies themselves.

It is not as if Gayle is full of shrew acumen and it being a case of his team letting him down. For a skipper to not know what the victory margin should be to make it to the semi-finals (as in the 2010 edition of the World T20) is strange enough. When enquired by the commentator at the toss about the same, all Gayle did was to giggle like a girl on her first date; surely, not what you would expect a Ricky Ponting or a Sourav Ganguly to do? Again, John Dyson had been blamed for that infamous Duckworth-Lewis blunder against England, but what was Gayle doing then? Haven’t we seen captains carry the DL sheets in their pockets all the time when there is a sniff of rain in the air?

To me, it looks like the West Indian Board to send out applications to recruit a new captain.

Will Gayle & Co. crash Ponting’s Birthday Party?

Match: Australia vs West Indies, 3rd Test Match at WACA Ground (Perth), 4th Day: 19th December 2009 

After giving away a two hundred runs 1st innings lead yesterday by managing to lose their last six wickets for the addition of just 27 runs, the West Indians bounced back in style soon after. Australia captain Rickey Ponting decided against enforcing the follow-on but in their second essay, the home team were bowled out for a mere 150 runs, leaving West Indies a target of 359 runs to win the test and level the series.

When the second Australia innings began, Ponting who had been injured while batting in the first innings had announced that he won’t come in to bat unless the situation was desperate. It soon did forcing Ponting to come in, but he could add only 2 runs before his dismissal.

It’s Ponting’s birthday today, and for an already injured man, a loss today would be a severe double-blow. West Indies have not won a test in Australia for more than a decade. To lose a test to West Indies at home would be too big a defeat for the Aussie selectors to ignore. Ponting’s whose captaincy has been under some questioning for the past couple of years might be forced to relinquish his post if that were to happen.

Can the West Indies end Australia’s unoffical reign at the top?

After an embarassing defeat at Brisbane, there was this cricket expert who called for the scrapping of Test status for the West Indies team. Stung by the fierce criticism Gayle and his men bounced back strongly in the very next test. For a team which had hit such a nadir to take even the innings lead against the might Australians in their very own backyard was nothing less than a major victory. Entering the 3rd Test, it might be the home team now which may be under pressure.

That this Australia is not the Australia that dominated world cricket for the last decade and more is something beyond doubt. But they are still in the reckoning for the no.1 status because today there is no other team which is globally dominating like the Aussies or the Windies were during their peaks. But a test defeat at home at the hands of this Windies team will finish even the remnant of a claim that Australia may have to the top spot. No West Indies team has won a test in Australia since their tour of 1996-97; surely Ponting’s men wouldn’t want that winless spree to end at Perth. Rickey Ponting knows that he and his team are being watched closely every time they play a test. South Africa may have briefly held the mantle of being the no.1 team and now India has taken over the ICC no.1 rank in tests but avid followers of the game know that India’s elevation to the top spot is a statistical blunder and they don’t deserve the crown without winning a series in either of Australia or South Africa. But if the Oz lose at home to the West Indies, it will well neigh be the closure of a debate that has been on for the past couple of years. Australia will no longer have a statistical or a non-statistical claim left on the Test crown, and India’s no.1 status will no longer remain only a mathematical one.

For the record, of the six meetings between the two teams at the WACA Perth, Australia have won just once, in their last meeting. Furthermore, Australia have ended up losing the last two tests they played at Perth.