Cricket’s mightiest fall
The once-great West Indian cricket team hit its lowest point over the weekend, failing to qualify for the Cricket World Cup for the first time in the tournament’s history. Gone are the days of the greats that won the West Indians the first two World Cups and the final of the third; even the stars that helped them dominate T20 Cricket in the mid-2010s are now gone. Forced to go through qualifiers to reach the tournament proper, the Windies barely scraped through their group — losing to Zimbabwe and the Netherlands — and needed to win all their Super Six matches to reach the World Cup.
Instead, they were bundled out by Scotland in a one-sided affair, and with two games left, they are still expected to lose at least one more game — against Sri Lanka, which has already booked a place at the World Cup with a perfect record in qualifying — and even in the game against lowly Oman, victory is not a foregone conclusion. West Indies cricket has been in decline for several years. This decline has been expedited by the nature of T20 cricket leagues, which have made it harder for the West Indian players, in particular, to regularly play and practice together — the West Indies represent 15 countries and territories. Few top players regularly stay in the same place, as they try to maximise earnings from leagues around the world. In fact, several top West Indian players have refused to play for the national team, preferring to keep themselves fit for their club teams. However, as former Windies star Ian Bishop noted, Zimbabwe performed much better at the tournament despite having a similarly small player pool and limited resources. Bishop attributed this to better administration and management, and supported letting the current team leadership continue for a little longer to help them learn from their mistakes, though he did admit such learning should have taken place several years ago, when the team’s struggles began. Indeed, while all great teams eventually fade, well-run operations can soften the fall and hasten recovery.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 4th, 2023.
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