Friday 18 May 2007

An Ice Island and West Indian Woes

Torturous viewing! West Indies did not bowl badly in the morning session but they dropped catches; after lunch it was all England as the weaknesses of the bowling attack were cruelly exposed. Of course, poor umpiring did not help as Collingwood was plumb LBW to Taylor in the morning and was not given out by umpire Asad Rauf. It is amazing how many times poor umpiring decisions go against us, whether we are batting or bowling.

I was not at all surprised that Prior scored a century on debut. We have made it a habit in recent years to gift centuries on debut to batsmen and from the time the fools started bowling short at him and he kept swatting them away, a century was there for the taking. What sense does it make to bowl short at a batsman if he keeps putting you away? Nothing makes my blood boil more than to see a pathetic so-called fast bowler from the West Indies bowling sugary short balls to a batsman and then giving him chat and glares. You should be on a plane back to the Caribbean in disguise! I wish I could feel positive but it appears as if an innings defeat will be the result.

In more depressing news- almost everyday we hear negative news about the destruction of the environment and climate change- I saw a feature today on BBC about Ayles Ice Island, an iceberg that broke away from the Arctic coastline in summer 2005. The iceberg is huge- 10 miles long and three miles across- and while it separated almost two years ago, it has only now received public attention. The event is significant as it has transformed geography of the region and provides more evidence of the effects of climate change. A BBC team along with two scientists have departed for the island and will be providing daily updates.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poor Windies ... I think they try their best, but they just don't have a clue. It's so painful to watch. As you know I know very little about cricket, but it seems to me that the game has changed so much from the days when we were on top and we don't seem to aware of it.

I can't make a comment about the inherent talent of any of the players, but I do know that today talent is not enough. Which makes me wonder about the quality of the infrastructure that scouts for talent and grooms young players, also makes me wonder about the level of coaching and training that goes into the making of the team. After all, that's what makes a good athlete ... the talent has to be there but the training makes the difference. An ill equipped team will not win squat, no matter how much they want it or we want it.

I would like some feedback on this because I am trying to understand how we moved from mighty to mouse and what can be done about it.

I can't help feeling that whatever is ailing the West Indies Cricket Team goes deeper than just the game ... that team is like a metaphor for all that ails the West Indies but ... that's a whole other conversation.

As for the comment on global warming ... haven't you heard? There is NO Global Warming. It's all ... including that ice island, a figment of our imagination.

individuality1977 said...

A variety of reasons can be put forward for the drastic decline of West Indian cricket, among them poor administration, failure to keep up with the technological/training advances that other teams have taken advantage of, a move towards a culture of mediocrity in the region which has been reflected in the cricket, cultural changes in the Caribbean which have also been witnessed in the current team members, lack of nationalism/ national pride compared to earlier teams. I guess the dictates of the law of nature also meant that we could never maintain our dominance for ever but what hurts is that the decline was so rapid. I believe the major obstacle preventing us from even returning a quarter way to where we were before is the WICB. I wrote about them in some other posts before but briefly, until there is a revolution in the administrative structure of our cricket and power is taken from the greedy, inefficient, corrupt cabal that runs our cricket we will continue to languish at the bottom of the cricketing rankings.