How pitch switch hit the brakes for West Indies
Once-great team are still paying the price for their wickets being slowed down, writes Scyld Berry
As Kenneth Williams always said in the radio programme Beyond Our Ken, when playing the gardener Arthur Fallowfield: “The answer lies in the soil.” And it certainly goes a long way to explaining why West Indies have declined from being world Test champions, in all but official title, between 1980 and 1995 to being hapless in every facet of the game in the Edgbaston Test.
West Indian cricket shone brightest when pitches in the Caribbean literally shone. Not in Trinidad, which has always helped spinners, but Antigua, Barbados and Jamaica had pitches wherein a batsman could see mirrored, not his facial features, but his shadow and silhouette because they were so hard, polished and pacy. Bowlers needed no second invitation to bowl quick, and batsmen were forced to adapt to survive and score: here, uncoached, were the unique qualities of West Indian cricket.
In last winter’s four-day competition in the West Indies the five leading wicket-takers were all spinners. The only non-spinner in the top eight was Raymon Reifer, who is in this West Indies squad, a left-arm medium-paced allrounder. The Caribbean has continued to produce tall and strong bowlers, such as Shane Shillingford or Sulieman Benn, but they do not bowl fast because the pitches have deterred them.
Such is the standard of the current four-day competition, it has no sponsor. Thirty years ago, in the Red Stripe tournament, as it was then known, six of the top eight in the bowling averages were fast bowlers – not just ordinary pace bowlers but some of the all-time greats: Ian Bishop and Curtly Ambrose, Malcolm Marshall and Winston Benjamin, Joel Garner and Courtney Walsh.
So, what happened? The answer, lying in the soil, is that in the late 1980s the West Indies Cricket Board instructed its Test grounds to slow pitches down: so I was told by Walsh himself, who captained West Indies, when researching my book Cricket: the Game of Life.
Too many Tests were ending in three days, he said, maybe four. The television broadcasters, local officials and other stakeholders were not happy at this loss of revenue. In the interests of short-term financial gain it set in train the process which deprived West Indian cricket of its unique qualities. These great fast bowlers learned how to cope, of course, with slow pitches in the Caribbean. All six played county cricket, on a variety of surfaces, and worked out how to reduce their pace but never their accuracy. There was no incentive, however, for young bowlers to learn how to bowl fast.
According to a board spokesman, the quickest pitch in the Caribbean now is at the Darren Sammy Stadium at Gros Islet in St Lucia, one of the volcanic, green and rainy Windward Islands which have yet to produce a great cricketer. This is a double irony. Sammy is one of the many senior players who, guilty of speaking his mind, has fallen out with the board and its chairman Whycliffe Cameron.
Secondly, a couple of months ago, West Indies hosted Afghanistan at this stadium in a one-day international and were beaten by 63 runs. The West Indian attack consisted of Jason Holder, Miguel Cummins, Alzarri Joseph and Shannon Gabriel – four of their five pace bowlers on this current tour, along with Kemar Roach – and lost to a country where cricket did not exist 20 or even 15 years ago.
The board administrators who have initiated and presided over this decline clearly need help – from the governments of the West Indian territories. Each has to employ a team of groundsmen to go round club grounds with a heavy roller and do the basics of seeding, mowing and rolling – as the old-time club volunteers are dying out. Here is the fundamental requirement, so that youngsters can see the ball fly and work out how to hit it. From there, and only from there, everything will follow.