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I need to return to the two-Test series between Australia and the West Indies that played out last month in Australia.
The series was tied 1-1 and the cricket world was thrown into shock. Here it was, a group of young, uncapped cricketers, winning a Test match against Australia – unbelievably, a feat not accomplished for 27 years, since the days of Brian Lara and Carl Hooper. No wonder both those two esteemed gentlemen shed tears in the commentary booth.
This so-called weak team of the Caribbean was chosen from those who were available to represent the WI. Thus they were considered a laughing stock by West Indian and Australian cricket critics, while those who were not that unkind in their thinking, quietly wondered what it would be like to win. Anyone who was crazy enough to believe that could happen was dismissed as a dreamer.
There was good cause to think that way, from the simple commonsense observation that, apart from Australia being world champions in Test cricket – one of the toughest challenges in sport – and their opponents were a hopeless side who have been in the bottom half of the championship table for a couple of decades, there was absolutely no ground to give the staunchest optimist hope that the losers from the Caribbean would change anything.
Many cricket writers and critics, former players and present-day active cricketers reported and announced that WI did not have the ghost of a chance, because there were seven uncapped players in their squad, and they needed their best team to strangle the Aussies in their backyard.
At the time I thought to myself, “It is better to have these green players rather than those the critics believed formed the best team.”
My rationale was that there was no guarantee that an experienced WI team would perform any better. Start afresh, and in that way the selectors could breed a new positive feeling in the dressing-room that would be invigorating and taken onto the field of play to challenge the opposition.
It would be a new beginning, with no older players to create doubt in the uncapped and inexperienced Caribbean cricketers’ minds. Fresh personnel, minus a losing mentality.
It would have been fine if there were quality seniors available.
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However, I don’t think those who were around would have made a difference. They’ve grown accustomed to this 20-over circus where batsmen have no time to play an innings or conquer a bowler, while, on the reverse side, the bowler has only four overs, which is no time to tactically work out a batsman, and scarce time to bowl at one particular batsman before the spell is over.
T20 players would not last in a Test match, as it requires oodles of concentration and purpose to bat and be able to build an innings, or to bowl longer spells than four overs.
By contrast, a Test cricketer can adjust quite naturally. Test cricket is the essence of the sport. It includes the wicket, which can mostly be a changing surface. It requires planning and various strategies for bowlers and batsmen to work out when to attack and when to defend.
In the game of cricket, to be the superior team in a particular contest, one has to dismiss the opposing team. When a side can do that twice against an opponent for fewer runs than it has scored, then it is truly the superior team.
The introduction of Shamar Joseph, an unspoilt 24-year-old fast bowler from Guyana, was an excellent selection by lead selector Desmond Haynes and coach Andre Coley. He had only one season of first-class cricket for his country. The selectors, with a sharp eye for talent, made him their choice to visit South Africa with the WI A team, where he did enough to ink in his name for the Australian tour.
What the selectors might not have witnessed is the personality of the player.
It is that factor which made a vast difference to the WI team. Shamar’s sheer delight in bowling fast, his pure unadulterated joy in dismissing batsmen, plus his child-like enthusiasm for cricket, can only inspire others around him. His infectious spirit brought that dressing room to life and created self-belief in his fellow players.
It started in the first game and came to fruition in the second. Oh, how Kraigg Brathwaite must have been longing for that injection of influential positivity and killer instinct, which lifted all the players’ spirits and made them believe.
 
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