West Indies T20 star Pollard not good enough? England’s David Gower fails QED test

“A Worrell innings knows no dawn. It begins at high noon!”

“He never played an ungrammatical stroke.”

Photo: West Indies batsman Frank Worrell goes on the attack.

Those two sentences describing the batting of the West Indies greatest ever captain Sir Frank Worrell were penned by Neville Cardus, the doyen of English cricket writers.

“Clive Lloyd.”

That, so the story goes, was the immediate response of a British schoolboy who, not long after the 1979 World Cup, was asked what is Black Power. Lloyd, of course, is the WI’s most successful captain ever.

I bring the two former captains up here to remind readers that some Englishmen genuinely appreciate WI cricketing achievement. And I add former Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack editor Scyld Berry’s consistent salute of Viv Richards as ‘The Great Man’, the ultimate accolade. And universal ungrudging acknowledgement of Brian Lara as ‘The Prince of Port-of-Spain’.

All that, I hope, will help frame a former England captain’s comment—made on SportsTiger’s show ‘Off-the-Field’ recently—on the current WI white ball skipper.

Photo: West Indies captain Kieron Pollard gestures during their first ODI match against Sri Lanka in Colombo on 22 February 2020.
(Copyright AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

According to 63-year-old David Gower, Kieron Pollard, the big-hitting all-rounder with over 500 T20 matches to his name: ‘is one of the world’s best T20 players. But he knows as well as I do that he cannot play Test cricket; he isn’t good enough to play Test cricket’. (my emphasis)

Seriously?

Pollard has played 113 ODIs and 73 T20Is and featured in 27 first-class games, scoring 1584 runs with four centuries. But he has never been selected on a WI Test XI.

In 2010, at the height of his powers, Polly opted to turn down the restrictive central contract offered by the WICB. Foresight being T20 vision, he had arguably perceived early that a successful career in the short format would be much more lucrative than an equally successful Test career.

He made his choice, stood by it. It may have cost him a WI Test place. It also seems to have earned him Gower’s ire. And perhaps something else?


Photo: England cricket analyst and former star David Gower.

“Someone else playing Test cricket for WI, however, won’t be able to make as much money as Kieron Pollard,” Gower continued “I am quite comfortable with that but this is how the world works now.”

Sour grapes? Who knows? He would not be the first England player to begrudge a West Indian his spurs.

Remember Geoffrey Boycott, beg yuh pardon, now Sir Geoffrey Boycott in 2017? His undisguised anger at how knighthoods were handed out ‘like confetti’ to Black WI cricketers? His comments about how much more deserving of a ‘Sir’ before his name he was than Garry Sobers, Viv Richards and Curtly Ambrose?

Who has forgotten Mark Nicholas’ dismissive one-liner a year earlier about WI cricketers being ‘short of brains’? Thank God Daren Sammy’s side was almost immediately able to ram those words back down his throat with their World T20 Championship triumph.

So, returning to our primary subject, Gower’s comment is not all that surprising. However, while Pollard does know that he has not played Test cricket, he certainly has never conceded that he cannot play Test cricket. Not publicly anyway.

Photo: West Indies’ Kieron Pollard bats during the third T20 match against India in Mumbai on 11 December 2019.
(Copyright AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

And to go from ‘has not played’ to ‘cannot play’ is a leap which, notwithstanding 117 Tests and 114 ODIs played and countless others watched, not even Gower is in a position to make. Not without evoking memories of Jesse Owens, Bob Beamon, Carl Lewis and Mike Powell in their prime.

Pollard’s stats certainly do not bear Gower’s claim out. His first first-class century came in 2007 in his debut appearance against Barbados, 86 of his 126 runs coming in boundaries. He made a second first-class century against the Leeward Islands and earned himself five Man-of-the-Match awards in his first 15 senior matches. He finished as the top run-scorer in the 2006/07 regional competition, amassing 261 runs from his seven innings with a 40+ average.

No comparison, of course, to the elegant left-handed opener’s final tally of 8231 Test runs, fourth highest by an Englishman, and 3,000-plus ODI ones as well. But is that reason enough to make a completely unsubstantiated 13-word claim and leave it at that? Without a shred of supporting evidence?

No one expects Gower to produce Pythagorean arguments about the right angle to get Pollard on all three WI sides. Nor do we expect him to produce voluminous Einstein-like e=mc2 scribblings to persuade us.

Photo: West Indies cricketer Kieron Pollard pulls to leg during an ODI at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown on 24 June 2016.
(Copyright AFP 2017/Jewel Samad)

But is it too much to ask for a lil QED?

Ignoring England’s Mark Ramprakash—he did play Test cricket but could he?—I shall cite only their Graeme Hick. He eventually scored 136 centuries and 158 50s in 526 first-class matches. But in 65 Tests, he managed only six centuries and 18 half-centuries.

Does that singular example tell us anything about the predictability of performance at the highest level?

Closer home, a handful of WI names come to mind as inviting comparison with Pollard. This time, there are two deliberate omissions: Rakheem Cornwall (3 Tests) and Sammy (30 when he played the last of his 38 Tests).

But what qualities did Collis King, whose contribution to the WI 1979 World Cup win no WI fan has forgotten, have that Pollard does not have? Yet, between 1976 and 1980—in an era when WI already boasted abundant riches in the cricket bank—King played as many as nine Tests.

Photo: West Indies captain Daren Sammy (left) celebrates with teammate Kirk Edwards.

Consider too Ricardo Powell and Dwayne Smith. Does either player strike one as being a more talented cricketer than Pollard? Powell was quickly discarded after just two Tests; between 2004 and 2006, Smith earned selection in 10 Tests.

What of Brendan Nash, easy to forget despite his 21 Tests that yielded 1103 runs? If, knowing what we now know, we had to pick a WI Test player in 2008 (when Nash made his debut), which of us—Gower, of course, excluded!—would choose the Australia–born all-rounder?

It is, I think, entirely plausible that Pollard would have struggled to hold a Test place. But what justification can there be for his not having had the opportunity to prove himself at that level?

So we await Gower’s explanation. Or more likely, like Nicholas and Boycott before him, his abject apology.

But the fairy-tale ending—say Greig!—would be for the WI selectors to belatedly give the 33-year-old all-rounder a Test call-up next year.

And make G-o-w-e-r  g-r-o-v-e-l.

Photo: West Indies cricket star Kieron Pollard.
(via Reuters)
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About Earl Best

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.

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4 comments

  1. Mr Best

    Back in the 70s and 80s test cricket was for your best cricketers. This thing about specialist format players especially where test cricket is concerned does not work, especially for West Indies.
    Richard Gabriel played test cricket, and Larry Gomes played one day cricket, and the teams they played in were successful. I remember very few changes to the team for the different formats during a series.
    This 3 team ting here not wukin!
    We have many players in the test team that are not the best players in those positions in the region.. For example :
    Dowrich is not the best wicket keeper, or wicket keeper batsman
    No spinner possibly with the exception of Walsh from Barbados is a better spin bowler than Nsrine
    Andre Russell is a much more penetrative, aggressive wicket taking fast bowler than Roach.
    And none of the batsmen in the last series versus England are considered our best batsmen on any good day…. BTW you ever noticed that any time Shai Hope s scores runs we lose?
    I believe Pollard should be the test skipper as well, as Holder always lapses in concentration at the most crucial point of the game. Add Roddy Estwick, and a surprisingly lack lustre coach Simmons to Holder’s weakness, and you have a recipe to make you cuss whilst watching the games.
    Pollard brings that intensity to the team that we saw under Lloyd and Richards. He is a winner, knows how to win, and that characteristic is sorely absent at the leadership level of the test team.
    I say bring Pollard, Narine, Russel, Ramdhin, Simmons, Keemo Paul, Lewis, Pooran and Deyal into the test team immediately.

    • I’m with you on the Pollard for Test captain score; I’m preparing to make the case publicly.

      Can’t agree with you on the composition of that Test team, though. Nine Trinis–without Darren Bravo and including Ramdhin? No Jason Holder? No Roston Chase? You’re really leaving out Rakheem Cornwall?

      Sounds like a Trini bias to me!

      Legal people that he who comes for justice must come with clean hands. I think I dirty my hands by picking nine Trinis–even if we are far and away the country currently producing the best cricketers in the region

      • Mr Best
        Chase, Holder, Walsh, Joseph, Thomas, Hetmyer, Russell, Blackwood, Braithwaite, Bravo, Lewis, Simmons, Pooran, Ramdhin, Gabriel, Narine, Paul, Deyal, Cotrell and Pollard…. Test team from this group

        • I have questions about your squad but that’s much closer to a realistic starting bunch. Just two questions for now: (1) Mark Deyal? You think he is ready to face up to the best in the world? (2) Is this Carlos or Kraigg Brathwaite? I think I know the answer but I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

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