Today the 21st Test series between the West Indies and historically our most formidable and most feared opponent, Australia, begins at the famous Georgetown Cricket Club Ground in Bourda. This important first Test is taking place in circumstances marred by controversy centring around two developments, namely, the morally reprehensible decision to restore the captaincy of the West Indies team to the notoriously ill-disciplined Brian Lara and the withdrawal of former skipper, Carl Hooper from the squad of players chosen by the regional selectors for the match. From a West Indian perspective these are not the ideal conditions for an encounter between a regional team, which presently is only a moderate force in international cricket, and Steve Waugh's powerful side. This clash with the undisputed world champions of both Test and limited-over cricket is likely to be a moment of truth for the West Indies - an occasion when the true reality of Caribbean cricket will be exposed and known.
The Australians, with their confidence greatly boosted by their victory in the recent World Cup tournament, will provide a searching test for the West Indies, even though they are without the services of their two best bowlers, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne. The test will reveal what measure of success has been achieved by the West Indies cricket authorities in achieving their primary objective of rebuilding a team which will be able to regain the ascendancy in world cricket enjoyed in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The current series will provide answers to some major questions about West Indies batting. Admittedly the batting, for many years the Achilles heel of West Indies Test cricket, has on the whole improved recently, becoming more consistent and productive and less prone to unexpected dramatic collapses. However, the encounter with Jason Gillespie, Brett Lee and Andy Bichel will no doubt provide conclusive evidence as to whether an able pair of opening batsmen is still a major need of West Indies cricket. In short, this series should show whether Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Darren Ganga and Devon Smith have the ability to cope effectively with good pace bowling and give their team the substantial opening partnerships it has seldom had since the era of Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes.
For example, in the Australian's last tour of the Caribbean in 1999, the openers, Sherwin Campbell and Suruj Ragoonauth, for the first two Tests and Campbell and Adrian Griffith in the other two Tests had first-wicket stands of 16 and 3, 4 and 3 (unbroken), 1 and 72, and 19 and 56, - in short, five poor starts in eight innings. Similarly, in the last series between the two sides in Australia in 2000-01 the West Indies had only two satisfactory opening partnerships, both in the final Test. In the first four Tests Campbell and Ganga had opening stands of 21 and 0, 1 and 7, 45 and 26, and 5 and 1, while in the fifth Test at Sydney Campbell and Hinds put on 147 and 98. Thus in five of the ten innings, the opening pair was parted before the score reached ten, putting immense pressure on the remaining batsmen.
The current series is likely to show whether Ganga, who looks technically the best of the West Indies openers and is now recalled after being discarded like Griffith and Campbell, has the ability or potential to become a successful Test opener. In Australia in 2000-01, he performed dismally, scoring only 107 runs in 8 Test innings with a top score of 32 and a paltry average of 13.37 runs an innings. Will his performance be significantly better in the present series or will he continue to be a good-looking failure and be eventually discarded again? This series will be a moment of truth for him.
The current rubber will also be a testing time for the West Indies middle-order batsmen. During the last Australian Caribbean tour the middle order was saved repeatedly virtually single-handedly by the amazing brilliance of master-batsman Brian Lara. Lara in 7 innings amassed 546 runs, including a double-century (213), two hundreds (153 not-out and 100) and a half-century (62), with an excellent average of 91.00 runs an innings. His aggregate was considerably more than the combined scores of the three other specialist middle-order batsmen selected for the various Tests, namely, Jimmy Adams (all 4 Tests), Dave Joseph (4), Carl Hooper (2), Roland Holder (1) and Lincoln Roberts (1), who in 21 innings made only 403 runs. The best of them was Adams with 168 runs in 7 innings, including only one substantial knock (94 at Sabina Park in the second Test), and an average of 24 runs an innings.
In the last West Indian tour of Australia in 2000-01, even Lara failed, scoring 321 runs in 10 innings, with more than half of these runs produced in one knock, a brilliant innings of 182 in the third Test at Adelaide. In spite of his failure, he was still the most productive of the team's middle-order batsmen. For example, Adams failed again, achieving an aggregate of only 151 runs in 10 innings with a highest score of 49 and an average of 18.88 runs an innings. Even more embarrassing was the performance of the promising Ramnaresh Sarwan, who in 6 innings made only 54 runs, of which 51 came from his final knock. Sarwan suffered the humiliation of a "pair" in the first Test at Brisbane and another duck in the first innings of the last Test at Sydney, finishing with an incredibly poor average for a specialist batsman of only 9.00 runs an innings.
The most consistent of the West Indian middle-order batsmen in the series was the young Jamaican, Marlon Samuels, making his Test debut at the age of nineteen. Samuels was summoned late to join the tour as a replacement for the injured Shivnarine Chanderpaul. In three Tests he scored 172 runs, with a highest score of 60 not-out and other useful innings of 35, 46 and 28, enabling him to top his team's batting averages with 34.40. It will be interesting and instructive to see how Samuels and Sarwan fare in the current series, for they seem to be the most talented of the younger generation of West Indian batsmen. This rubber may provide more definitive evidence of their ability and potential and indicate whether they are likely to develop into good or great world-class batsmen in the relatively near future.
This series is also likely to test the calibre of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who, though only 28 years old, is a veteran of over 60 Tests. Owing to injury, Chanderpaul played in only one test in the last two series against Australia, missing the entire 1999 rubber and playing only the first match at Brisbane in the 2001-01 clash. In this game, which Australia won by an innings and 126 runs, Chanderpaul made 18, the second highest score in his team's first innings total of 82, and 62 not out, exactly half of its second innings' score of 124. Since that rubber, a resurgent Chanderpaul has recovered both his health and form. A productive series against the visiting Aussies will confirm his critical value to the West Indies team and the fact that he is one of the few quality players in the regional side.
Since the 2001-01 series, with Courtney Walsh joining Curtly Ambrose in retirement, bowling has become the weakest area of West Indies cricket.
The able aggressive Australian batsmen will provide a serious test for a West Indian attack that is largely deficient not only in hostility, movement, spin and penetration, but also in the fundamentals of good bowling, such as command of line and length. The rubber is likely to indicate whether Mervyn Dillon is an adequate spearhead of the attack and whether Vasbert Drakes, who is quite effective in limited-over cricket, will be a force to be reckoned within the longer and more demanding version of the game. The most critical consideration, however is whether the West Indies will be able to restrict the Australians to moderate totals between 300 and 350.
The current rubber will also reveal whether the West Indies team will miss the services of Carl Hooper as a bowler. Since his return to international cricket two years ago and especially since Courtney Walsh's retirement, Hooper has almost invariably been the team's most economical bowler in Test Cricket, and often the only bowler to contain batsmen on the rampage, as he did notably in Sri Lanka. In addition, he often takes some valuable wickets.
Where the future of West Indies cricket is concerned, perhaps the most important aspect of the current rubber may be the bowling of Jermaine Lawson who in the recent World Cup bowled the fourth fastest delivery. This rubber may indicate whether or how soon he will develop into a good fast bowler in the tradition set by the great Caribbean pace bowlers of the past, such as Wesley Hall, Charlie Griffith and the fearsome pace quartets of the 1980s and early 1990s, who were instrumental in enabling the West Indies to gain ascendancy in world cricket. For an attack which presently is lacking in penetration and hostility, Lawson, still inexperienced and untested, provides a glimmer of hope. This rubber may be a moment of truth for him.
Notwithstanding the validity of the considerations mentioned above, the real moment of truth for West Indies cricket will be presented not so much by the visit of Steve Waugh's team, as by West Indian tours overseas to countries other than Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. On such tours, where in the past five years the regional team has suffered several embarrassing "whitewashes", their batsmen encounter not the easy flat pitches of the Caribbean which offer bowlers little pace, movement or turn, but wickets which provide much greater pace, bounce, lateral movement and turn and put the questionable technique of many West Indian batsmen under severe pressure. This, for example, was the case in Australia two years ago when Jimmy Adams' team experienced a humiliating 5-0 defeat, the only clean sweep in the twenty Test series between the two teams dating back to 1930-31.
In short, if Brian Lara's side perform dismally in the current series against the Aussies, the team and its numerous loyal supporters across the Caribbean can only view the next West Indian tour down under with great trepidation.
A moment of truth, however, not the moment of truth, for West Indies cricket has now arrived.