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In the lead-up to the First Test which ended at Lord’s last week, Brian Lara, a master of timing, reaffirmed his long-held position on the possibilities for West Indies cricket.
“I still believe we have some of the best talents in the world,” the Guardian reports him as saying, “but talent isn’t everything.”
And the Prince of Port-of-Spain went further to identify some of the talent which, in his view, the powers-that-be might currently be ignoring.
“I don’t know if he’s been asked,” he continued. “But everyone would love to see Nicholas Pooran in a Test match.”
Maybe not everyone.
For years, Geoff Boycott was the dean of the defensive prod, the polar opposite of the dapper left-hander, all drive and cut and Larabesque pulls. You’d not expect the double world record holder and the long-time analyst obsessed with the corridor of uncertainty to agree on too much.
Photo: ICC/ Getty
But like Lara, the former England opener had a message for the cricketing fraternity.
Writing in the Telegraph, he hit out at players who allowed “ego and hubris” to get the better of them.
“They came out with comments,” he noted, “about being entertainers and how important it was to score quickly and thrill the crowds.”
Then, addressing the cricketers directly, he offered this ringing admonition:
“Test match cricket should not be about how many sixes you hit or how many runs you score in the fewest number of balls.”
Let us suppose for a moment that the former Sunrisers Hyderabad coach accepts the Yorkshireman’s description of what constitutes a proper approach to Test batting. Could his indirect call for Pooran’s inclusion have come at a more inopportune moment?
Truth is that Lara told the Guardian interviewer he was not comfortable with the batting the West Indies had at their disposal. He would pick, he said, “a more aggressive side”.
Clearly, he was referring to the squad and not to the XI eventually selected for the Lord’s Test.
Photo: Getty
England largely treated that game as a farewell tribute to Jimmy Anderson, the retiring England veteran of two decades. Seemingly content to cooperate and comply, WI went in with one debutant opener in Mikyle Louis and a middle order of Kirk McKenzie (3 Tests), Alick Athanaze (4) and Kavem Hodge (2).
Unsurprisingly, the mismatch was over in under seven sessions.
It would be no overstatement to say that not a single West Indian distinguished himself. Not at any rate with the bat.
Photo: Getty
The batsmen managed a combined total of just over 250 in their two innings—Louis’ 27 and Gudakesh Motie’s 31 being the top scores in each.
In the first innings, Athanaze and Hodge put on 44 for the fourth wicket. Bidding to at least get their team past their paltry first innings 121 if not to make England bat again, #9 Motie and #11 Jayden Seales added 33, more than any other pair in the second innings.
It should be noted that 14 of the 20 WI batsmen dismissed fell to catches. Only one, it is worth noting, on or near the boundary.
Photo: Getty
On a related note, only Hodge (24) and Louis (27) managed to clear the boundary cushions in the first innings, once each. In the second innings, everyone except McKenzie (0) and Shamar Joseph (3) contrived to reach the boundary at least once. No one, however, was able to clear it.
This Pooran-less iteration of the West Indies is emphatically NOT a six-hitting team.
With the ball, Seales claimed four wickets and Motie and Alzarri Joseph finished with a couple of scalps each. But eerily the moment in the England innings that will arguably be remembered longest was a throwback to the halcyon days of the world-beating West Indies.
Photo: Getty
In a 1984 Test match on the same ground 40 years ago, Eldine Baptiste ran out a completely unsuspecting Geoff Miller at the non-striker’s end with a direct hit from long-leg. Last week, Louis’ bullet throw from deepish cover knocked one stump out of the ground with a disbelieving Shoaib Bashir more than a metre short.
So, what options do the WI have left as far as the Second Test, starting on Thursday at Trent Bridge, is concerned?
With his 704 wickets in 188 Tests, Anderson is now as settled in third spot behind Shane Warne (708) and Muttiah Muralitharan (800) as Lara (400) is anchored on another list above Matthew Hayden (380) and Garry Sobers (365).
Photo: Garth Copley/ Getty
So if they can upset the pommecythere cart with a victory a la Brisbane in January, WI need not worry about raining on anyone’s parade.
But what talent is available to the selectors to attempt to produce this second cataclysmic event?
It’s still way too early to write off Joseph (S) as a one-trick pony. But match figures of 15.4-1-68-0 hardly inspire confidence that, as some seem genuinely to believe, he can, no, will one day reproduce his Gabba heroics.
As skipper Kraigg Brathwaite pointed out, WI’s bowlers dismissed England in three sessions. The concern, if concern there is, has to be the batting.
Of the four squad members who did not make the final cut the only specialist batsman is Zachary McCaskie. Off-spinner Kevin Sinclair and reserve wicketkeeper Tevin Imlach are no rabbits but neither is a specialist. And Jeremiah Louis is a quickie.
Lara, we know, wants to see Pooran in whites for West Indies. If the gifted almost-30-year-old left-hander has expressed an interest in playing Test cricket, I missed it.
Well do I remember him, however, as a fresh-faced teenager after his swashbuckling CPL debut in 2013 telling the world that his burning ambition was to get an IPL contract.
The 55-year-old thrice-appointed West Indies captain is the only man ever to have climbed cricket’s Everest twice. He can be forgiven for believing in miracles, which is what we may need.
Maybe not. Powerful man that he is, maybe the Prince of Port-of-Spain can arrange for a sponsor.
Or channel his inner philanthropist and sponsor Pooran himself.
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Earl Best taught cricket, French, football and Spanish at QRC for many years and has written consistently for the Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review since the 1970’s.
He is also a former sports editor at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad Express and is now a senior lecturer in Journalism at COSTAATT.
