IT’S been a good week for West Indies cricket on the field, a bad week off it.
At last, the team has played two one-day internationals against Australia with the intensity and intelligence that is essential in any form of the game. The reward has been successive victories over the world champions who, until a week ago, had reeled off 21 in succession.
Yet the elation and optimism that naturally follow such rare, and belated, triumphs were unhappily compromised by the now familiar pilfering of the touring team’s gear in Trinidad, Brian Lara’s plea for improved practice facilities and more evidence of the insularity that continues to plague our cricket as much as it does everything else.
They were most untimely for reminders of why there are widespread doubts over our ability to properly host the 2007 World Cup.
After all, if we still cannot secure the luggage of a single team at our most modern airport or provide adequate net pitches for a bi-lateral series, how can we expect to handle 16 teams at a time at half dozen different airports and several separate venues?
This is the most difficult challenge confronting Chris Dehring and his diligent colleagues charged with planning what has the potential to be the most financially lucrative event ever staged in the region.
The damage done to our credibility was exemplified in a report by Trevor Marshallsea, who has covered the tour for two of Australia’s most prestigious papers, the Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning Herald.
He wrote that the piracy at Piarco had provided “more frustrations after another tour that has trapped many an Australian entourage member in a large grey area of the Caribbean, where West Indian laid-backness meets sheer incompetence and sometimes outright theft. The already slim hopes that the West Indies will host a smoothly run World Cup in 2007 have also been further dented as airline delays, missing baggage and lax crowd control at grounds have been common,” he added.
It is not difficult to imagine the reaction in the offices of the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) when manager Steve Bernard presents a tour report with similar strictures.
Such problems are by no means the only ones facing the World Cup organisers.
Stephen Alleyne, president of the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA), has made the self-evident point that the entire Caribbean will have to “unify and pull together” to ensure the success of the tournament.
He would not have been encouraged, therefore, by recent media hype in Barbados to get as many Bajans as possible into the West Indies team or the even more conspicuous campaign to have Devon Smith play in St.George’s, simply because he is Grenadian.
Kenny Hobson, a vice- president of the Grenada Cric-ket Association, went so far as to say on Grenada television last week that it would be a slap in the face for Grenadians if Smith wasn’t picked in St.George’s. Thankfully, such rubbish was consigned to the bin where it belongs by the West Indies’ second victory on Friday that followed that in Port-of-Spain four days earlier. On each occasion, the overall improvements were obvious. Partnerships were steadily built after the loss of a key wicket. The running between the wickets took on an urgency previously lacking and the fielding was sharper.
The top order batting was also more stable as Brian Lara reverted to the No.3 position that should always be his and Wavell Hinds used his dismissal and subsequent reinstatement by the selectors to concentrate his mind.
The West Indies have had few more significant one-day innings than his unbeaten 125 on Friday.
What is more, there is, at last, a captain bold enough to back his instincts and innovative enough to depart from the standard script. Unorthodox methods can often lead to acute embarrassment and they need some luck to succeed. But Lara’s reading of the conditions at the two Queen’s Parks - in Port-of- Spain last Sunday and St. George’s on Friday - and his consequent heavy, and successful, reliance on spin proved spot on.
It is hard to think of Carl Hooper or Jimmy Adams - or, for that matter, Ricky Ponting or Nasser Hussain - entrusting 10 full overs to Ramnaresh Sarwan’s little used leg-breaks as Lara did last Sunday. Or recalling Marlon Samuels to complete his 10 on Friday after his initial gamble of using him for three within the first 15 overs had cost 23 runs.
Throughout the season, Lara has kept repeating the theme that his young and inexperienced team is learning all the time, getting better with every match.
It has not always been obvious. There were so many elementary errors in the defeats in the opening match at Sabina and the third at Beausejours that quite the opposite seemed the case.
There is also the obvious condition that the two back-to-back wins, like that in the final Test, have come after the series was decided.
As such, they would count for little except for the pain of recent history.
Until the remarkable triumph in Antigua, the West Indies had lost nine consecutive Tests to Australia. Until last Sunday in Trinidad, the count was 10 one-day defeats in a row. Such humiliation is now behind Lara and his team. They now know they can beat the very best. They also know they can only do so with the urgency, consistency and commitment that earned them their overdue breakthrough during the past week.
The final match against Australia today and the three one-day internationals and two Tests against Sri Lanka that follow will be the sign posts to tell whether the West Indies have, finally, begun to head in the right direction.