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During my formative years, as South Africa was slowly emerging from the dark age of apartheid, I remember spending hours glued to the TV watching tall men in white outfits chasing around a red ball.
This was 1992, when South Africa travelled to the Caribbean for a one-off match in Bridgetown, Barbados, to take on the West Indies in their first test since readmission.
Although by then the Windies’ star had begun to fade – with the great Sir Viv Richards having hung up his gloves and Michael “Whispering Death” Holding calling it quits to go into the petrol business with Michael Holding’s Service Station in his home town of Kingston – no team in the world was as imperious or pedigreed.
But Brian Lara was becoming an uberbatsman and the bowling attack featured the Goliath seam pairing of Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh. If the ragtag bunch of South African part-timers had a chance, it was a fat one. Unsurprisingly, the Windies eased their way to a 52-run victory thanks to a second-innings annihilation by Ambrose and Walsh.
In the years that followed, there was hardly as much glory for the Calypso Kings. With the exception of big-hitting Chris Gayle, it seemed no succession plan was in place. Fast-forward a generation, maybe even two in cricket terms, and the West Indies now sit at eighth and ninth in the test and one-day rankings, respectively. From this, one could say the situation is as dire as ever, especially since the one-day team failed to qualify for next year’s ICC Champions Trophy.
Yet, as of last week, a new hope dawned in the Caribbean when the Windies became the first team to win the ICC World Twenty20 twice.
T20 is where the Windies appear most comfortable, throwing their heavy bats, and their luck, at almost every ball. Andre Russell, Dwayne Bravo, Marlon Samuels, Lendl Simmons, Darren Sammy and Carlos Brathwaite were inducted into a long line of illustrious West Indian cricketers.
With the added successes of the women’s team and Under-19s in their respective World T20 tournaments, the future of West Indies cricket, at least in the T20 format, suddenly looks bright. Samuels’ evenly paced innings in last week’s final might even signal a more measured approach to the longer formats and a road to recovery for this cricketing nation.
In a recent interview with the The Telegraph, Holding, in his capacity as a cricket commentator, drew some interesting parallels between the West Indies’ 20-year slump and the crisis South African cricket finds itself in today. With the majority of the Proteas team closer to retirement than the beginning of their careers, Kagiso Rabada and Quinton de Kock are the only two definitive hopes for the future.
If we are to avoid the kind of decades-long slump the West Indies have encountered, let’s hope Cricket SA has a plan in place to foster other emerging stars and give a new generation of youngsters a reason to watch grown men in white outfits chase a red ball around a field.
@Longbottom_69 is an armchair cricket critic. He always goes for a red ball over a blue one
