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As I watched an enthusiastic Alzarri Joseph (AJ) throw down short ball after short ball at Bangladesh’s Taskin Ahmed towards the end of Sunday’s post-tea session in the First Test in Antigua, that hard-to-stomach letter to the Wired868 editor came back to me.
Photo: Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868
“I think this has been badly handled by the West Indies board (the Cricket West Indies). I think [to] most people who saw it—and it was seen by the world—it was just a shocking display.
“[…] My own feeling, before I saw the two-match ban—which was short of a good length—was that he should face a suspension for five matches. He would not have played against England at all.”
I too had seen AJ storm off the field, following a very public disagreement with his captain, Shai Hope. But I had neither seen it with the same eyes nor arrived at the same conclusion.
I certainly did not see “a shocking display of indiscipline, and disrespect for your captain and your fellow players, disrespect to the crowd watching, and disrespect to the game.”
I did not see a bowler who “has obvious problems with his anger and aggression” and who “has been feeling the building pressure, because he is not king of the rock anymore”.
What I saw was a player so passionate about his cricket that he allowed it to run away with him. I saw a player wanting what he thought was best for the team and allowing his disappointment at not getting it to dictate his response.
Photo: Daniel Prentice/ Wired868
I also saw a captain, theoretically primus inter pares, who unfortunately was equally insistent on having his own way when the circumstances clearly demanded that he give way—temporarily!
And then, against Bangladesh on Sunday, I saw a bowler capable of inspiring fear in opposition batsmen, a thought confirmed for me by both Monday’s and Tuesday’s declarations.
AJ lets the ball do the talking. And we West Indians who want to see West Indies as winners again have to be thankful for his anger and aggression. We have to hope that all our current and future captains can manage it as successfully as other captains have done in the past.
A handful of titled examples:
Guilt trip: In the days before West Indies got “a black man to lead them”, Gerry Alexander, the captain in India in 1958-59, sent Roy Gilchrist home from the tour.
In his 2001 eulogy of the feared fast bowler, Dave Liverman said this:
Michael Manley, in his History of West Indies Cricket, called Gilchrist’s loss a tragedy, saying however that “Gilchrist was difficult, insufferably so at times. He was also potentially, a very great bowler”.
The loss to West Indies cricket was great, and the effect on a young man’s career was tragic indeed; many speculated whether a captain such as Worrell or Lloyd would have handled him better.
Jump ahead three decades to Wristband wrath, in 1993. Let 6” 7” pacer Curtly Ambrose tell the story of how Lloyd handled things in Sydney when Australia’s Dean Jones asked the umpires to tell him to take off his wristbands:
I wasn’t happy about it—I figured it was a stupid request, to be frank—and I said I wasn’t going to take them off. It was crazy. Our captain Richie Richardson persuaded me to do it but I was furious.
Two years later in 1995, Ambrose is involved with War with Waugh in Trinidad. Kenny Benjamin told Ambrose that Australian captain Steve Waugh had “cursed” him.
Waugh subsequently admitted he had asked Ambrose “what the f***” he was looking at.
Ambrose: “Did you swear at me?”
Waugh: “I can say what I want to say.”
Ambrose: “Man, don’t you effing swear at me again.”
In Time to Talk, his autobiography, Ambrose wrote that he “lost it. (…) I got seriously heated. I told him, ‘Man, I will knock you out—here and now. I don’t care if I have no career left’.
“That was when Richie intervened and told me to forget about it, and it was a good job he did because my ability to restrain myself was gone.”
Michael Holding is at the centre of Man U for you! Clive Lloyd’s all-conquering troops are in New Zealand in 1979/80 and feeling that the umpiring has been less than impartial.
When John Parker edges a short ball into Deryck Murray’s gloves, the appeal is turned down. Holding lets his frustration show by proceeding down the track and kicking two of the stumps at the striker’s end out of the ground.
Photo: Getty Images
Colin Croft would subsequently advise his fellow pacer to go and try out for a Manchester United place.
Square-leg umpire Fred Goodall asks Lloyd to have a word with his bowler. Standing in the slips next to the skipper Lawrence Rowe pipes up, “You guys are nothing but cheats.”
Still in New Zealand in 1979/80, there’s A shoulder to cry on, with Croft the main man.
Kiwi captain Richard Hadlee tickles a Croft legside bouncer through to wicketkeeper Murray.
Up goes a concerted, confident appeal.
“Not out,” says Goodall.
Like calypsonian Bally in Maxi Dub, Croft expose to he wey all he family born.
And as he runs in to bowl the next ball, the well-built Guyanese quick’s right shoulder makes violent contact—accidentally, according to the bowler—with the standing umpire’s back, knocking him off his perch.
With his fellow umpire in tow, Goodall approaches skipper Lloyd, who never moves from his position in the slips, to complain. Lloyd listens politely.
Goodall’s complaint finished, the West Indies skipper says nothing. And does nothing either.
I’m guessing that the myopic, heavy-handed, uninsightful Too-Lenientists calling for Alzarri’s blood didn’t—and still don’t!—approve of any of that kind of hands-off leniency foolishness.
And I find myself wondering about their reaction to No Mankad for me, thanks.
Remember in Lahore during World Cup 1987 when Lloyd’s West Indies had a chance to redeem themselves for the 1983 loss to India?
Last pair at the wicket, two runs needed off the last ball. Walsh runs in to deliver and, when he reaches the stumps, Saleem Jaffar a yard and a half down the wicket. Walsh stops, turns around and returns to his mark.
Pakistan win. WI still have only the two World Cup titles we already had on that day.
(via Caribbean National Weekly)
Maybe if we hadn’t been so lenient. We have to come down hard on them. Every time.
Who against a retroactive lifetime ban for the now retired 17-year veteran?
Editor’s Note: Click HERE to read veteran cricket commentator Joseph ‘Reds’ Perreira’s view on the Cricket West Indies (CWI) punishment meted out to fast bowler Alzarri Joseph.
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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.
“What I saw was a player so passionate about his cricket that he allowed it to run away with him. I saw a player wanting what he thought was best for the team and allowing his disappointment at not getting it to dictate his response.”
Mr. Best, I also saw what you saw, however, I also saw a shocking and unacceptable display of indiscipline, and disrespect for his captain and fellow players, disrespect to the crowd watching, and disrespect to the game and himself. I also saw a bowler who has obvious problems with his anger and aggression.