Peter Robinson cricket
Best bit of commentary out of the Caribbean so far has come from Sir Vivian Richards. “If he’s a number nine,” he opined, casting a magisterial eye over Shaun Pollock, “then I’m a Jewman.”
As if to demonstrate that he has no beef with any particular religious persuasion, Sir Viv followed this up a day or so later with a couple of “Jesus Christs”. It’s hard to imagine Mike Haysman getting away with anything like this, but so far as can be established there has been no uproar, no calls for Richards to be banished from the airwaves.
This may have to do with the esteem in which Richards, as the greatest batsman of the modern era, is held. It might also have something to do with the fact that Richards is built like Joe Frazier and no one wants to be the first to tell him to watch his language.
A third possibility is that most people sympathise with Richards and the likes of Ian Bishop and Wayne Daniel who have looked on in increasing despair as the West Indies have self-destructed at regular intervals. For men involved in West Indian cricket when it swaggered across the world, to watch the insipid, tentative cricket played by the current team must be hell.
Which is not to say that the present side have proved pushovers for Pollock’s South Africans. Lance Klusener, for one, might testify to the fact that this has not been an easy tour. But the point is that whenever the two teams have found themselves staring each other in the eye, the West Indians have looked away first.
This lack of self-belief manifested itself most notably in Antigua, where the home side prepared a pitch to suit spin-bowling and went into the match with just two seamers. Quite why Carl Hooper decided that it would be a good option to bat last in these circumstances is another matter, but the point is that the West Indies, with a magnificent tradition of fast bowling, have simply con- ceded this point to the visiting team.
You might say that this has been the difference between the two teams, but it goes deeper than that. What sepa-rates South Africa from the West Indies at the moment is what has been happening to the home side seems an almost classic attack of collective depression. The West Indians don’t believe that as a team that they can beat South Africa by employing their usual methods, so they’ve pretty much thrown these out of the window.
And while the thinking, and indeed the practice, of the alternatives has not been all bad, the approach has not been sufficient to turn the collective mind of the unit around. You might not approve, for instance, of Dinanath Ramnarine’s time-wasting at the end of the third Test, but you could not fault him as a scrapper. He’s bowled his heart out in the series, he’s put himself about the field, he’s tried to sell his wicket dearly. And while all of this has not been enough to save his team, there’s surely little argument that the West Indians would have been in a far better position had they been able to field 11 Ramnarines.
The mind’s a funny old place, despite what the motivational speakers and sports shrinks might say. If the West Indies are in a trough as a team, so too is Klusener as a batsman. As things have gone, the most punishing batsman in the world can’t buy a run at the moment. His body language at the crease suggests he’d rather be anywhere else (compare it to Pollock’s), he ignores his own basics (have a look at the bowling before you try to hit it), any semblance of luck at the crease has long since vanished.
None of which makes Klusener a bad player, or is even to suggest that he shouldn’t be in the side. He’s in one of those cycles of despair that seem to become more vicious with each turn and which, when you’re caught in them, seem to offer no avenue of escape. Fortunately for Klusener (although it might not seem of that much comfort right now) is that his team-mates still think he can play, and his willingness to adapt his bowling has enabled him to justify his selection. He has not received sufficient credit for adding this extra string to his bow.
Klusener will snap out of his poor form eventually. Something (and it’s difficult to predict what) will go for him and his luck will change. And eventually the pendulum will swing back for the West Indies. The really hard part for both Klusener and the West Indians will be to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel. That’s a consequence of taking part in a game that is played mostly in the mind.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa (www.cricket.co.za)
ENDS