Legends bemoan Windies’ woes as ‘tragedy’
The gradual decline of West Indian cricket is hardly a new phenomenon but the latest capitulation of a once-dominant Test match power has brought genuine expressions of sadness throughout the sport.
The defeat by an innings and 209 runs in the first day-night Test in England at Edgbaston at the weekend left both Caribbean legends and old international foes alike bemoaning what they saw as Windies cricket crashing to rock bottom.
With a callow visiting team looking helpless in the absence of their best players and losing 19 wickets in one woeful day on Saturday, the overwhelming feeling was summed up by former England captain Michael Vaughan, who worries about yet more humiliation for the visitors.
“I really fear that this series could be one of the saddest for Test cricket,” Vaughan told the BBC.
According to another former captain Geoff Boycott in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, there could be no room for English gloating because the Windies surrender at Edgbaston had been so “painful to watch.”
“This West Indies lot are the worst Test match team I have seen in more than 50 years of watching, playing and commentating on cricket,” Boycott wrote.
“They can’t bat and can’t bowl. I take no pleasure out of saying this as I played against some of the greatest players the world has ever seen wearing the maroon cap of the West Indies.
“It is a cricketing tragedy to see the West Indies like this... It is just sad to see a once-proud cricket Test team lower than any I have ever seen before.”
The sadness was felt much closer to home, too, with the great Antiguan fast bowler Curtly Ambrose telling the Daily Mail newspaper: “It does hurt. And it has reached a point where it is very embarrassing.
“For now, I’m just hoping West Indies can compete at Headingley and Lord’s (in the third Test) because what we have seen so far has been pathetic.”
It is now 17 years since a West Indies side won a Test in England and, as Vaughan suggested, “every time they have arrived, they seem to have got worse.”