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Brian Lara says Nicholas Pooran should be playing Test cricket for the West Indies. Not everyone agrees. But no one doubts that the prolific, talented almost-30-year-old left-hander is the West Indies’ best T20 batsman. By far.
Pooran, though, is under attack—directly and indirectly. And whether the criticisms constantly levelled at him are direct or indirect, most of them are unfair.
Many of the people responsible still proudly wear the West Indies World Series Cricket coral pink uniform. Or the big floppy hat that Richie Richardson popularized. Eons ago. And don’t really understand T20 cricket.
So says former Guardian sports editor and QRC captain Valentino ‘Tino’ Singh. Of course, Tino’s active days, both as journalist and as cricketer, are now firmly behind him.
In the 1970s and 80s, he learned the game at Harvard and at the Queen’s Park Oval. He was not a QPCC member but, as a QRC cricketer, he was a regular on the Oval scoreboard with its bird’s eye view of the proceedings.
This afforded him regular access to the valuable visual education which Test and regional cricket provided.
Today, however, his focus is emphatically not on yesterday but on tomorrow—his gaze is fixed on cricket’s future, not its past.
“Are you really serious?” he fires at me, equal proportions of anger and contempt completely undisguised, “what does ‘batting properly’ mean in 2024? In a T20 game?”
Lap shot. Ramp. Scoop. Reverse ramp. Reverse scoop. Reverse sweep. In the days when Tino was learning the game, short-format cricket was still in its infancy—of those ten words, only ‘shot’ and ‘sweep’ were part of the cricketing lexicon. As stand-alone items.
Fifty years on, today’s T20 batsmen have not only included these unorthodox shots in their match-day repertoire but they now make them a part of their practice sessions. What used to be admired as ‘funky’ or ‘inventive’ or ‘innovative’ or ‘improvisation’ even in the shortest format is now incorporated into the playbook of even red ball players.
Witness the example of Joe Root attempting to reverse-ramp the first ball of the fourth day of last year’s first Ashes Test over third man. Or reverse paddling as formidable a foe as Jasprit Bumrah into the hands of second slip.
Piers Morgan called Root’s fourth day audacity “one of the most brilliantly insane things I’ve ever watched”.
And in describing Rohit Sharma’s 92 off 41 balls against Australia in the recently concluded 2024 T20 World Cup, former England captain Nasser Hussain dared to speak of “brutal elegance”.
Photo: Daniel Prentice/ Wired868
There is no hint of disapproval. But in a Wired868 piece on the then ongoing World Cup, I had the audacity to accuse the high-scoring Pooran of “not batting properly”.
At the time, he was already among the leading scorers in the tournament and had already amassed 2000-plus T20I runs.
“What the hell,” the scandalised author of half a dozen books inquires impatiently as I hesitate to respond, “does that mean?”
Photo: Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868
“Well,” I begin, “it means…”
I stop. I stall.
It’s really weird! If not words, at least scores of very familiar pictures should promptly offer themselves to me. Neither happens. Nothing useful, Tino would later point out, offers itself to “a clearly closed mind”.
First and foremost, there should be Marlon Samuels destroying Lasith Malinga in Colombo in 2012. And again taking the England bowling apart in Kolkata in 2016.
And what logical, relevant definition of batting properly can exclude Carlos Brathwaite’s four mighty Eden Garden sixes which all ended up in the crowd? Or reference that knock’s twin with the unhappy ending, the 2019 World Cup match versus New Zealand at Old Trafford?
Brathwaite, remember, almost singlehandedly brought Holder’s team back from the grave. From 245 for 9 in pursuit of 292, the powerful allrounder consistently swung for the fences, getting to a richly deserved century and his team to 286.
Copyright: AFP 2016/ Dibyangshu Sarkar
With seven balls left and only six runs needed, perhaps the memory of Eden Gardens fights its way to the front of the former T20 captain’s mind.
He mindlessly hoicks Jimmy Neesham high into the sky—only for Trent Boult to snaffle the boundary-bound skier down at wide long-on.
WI lose by five runs.
But none of those pictures come to my mind. Nor does an example of much more recent vintage, Glenn Maxwell’s incredible legless World Cup double-century for Australia in 2023. Or any of a slew of other white-ball innings etched in the West Indian collective cricketing unconscious.
Instead, despite the precision of the question, my mental pool is inundated by a rapid succession of red-ball images. I shall return to them but suffice it to say for now that Tino soon seizes on them.
“Well…,” he urges, doubtless reading my mind.
“Let me make it easier for you,” he responds to my continuing silence. “Give me half-dozen examples of proper batting, batting properly if you prefer.”
Behind stumps are Australian wicket keeper Adam Gilchrist (left) and Mathew Hayden.
(Copyright AFP 2014/ Robert Taylor)
I reel off eight for him.
“Hmmm,” he says, “only West Indians bat properly? Interesting! And only in Test matches?”
“Well, [Frank] Worrell and [Jeffrey] Stollmeyer…”
“No need to get defensive,“ he cuts me short, laughing mirthlessly. “Is a natural response to go with what you know best. But that does not make it right.”
Long pause.
“You can’t really define batting properly, can you?”
“Playing each ball on its merit, I guess? But now I not sure that right.”
“It not right,” he responds. “That don’t even work for Test cricket nowadays—and daiz where, I not sure you notice, you get all your examples. From Tests.
“But my question was about white ball cricket, remember? I asked you about a T20 game in 2024.”
“I know.”
Another pause.
“What does properly really mean when you know exactly how many balls available to you?” He clasps his hands in front of his face as if he were praying. “And, sometimes, exactly how much runs you need to make to win?”
The hands move downwards to support his chin.
“I was a purist once too, you know,” he says slowly, like a man with toothache. “But not again. I realise progress not waiting for your permission or my permission or Michael Holding permission.
“Centuries make the difference. Is time you start seeing T20 cricket with 21st Century eyes.”
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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.
