Tony Becca | The truth, and nothing but the truth

When I was a boy, my mother, and my father, used to tell me, religiously, to always speak the truth regardless of the consequences.

Since then, I have always tried to speak the truth.

Today, I still try to, and that is why I am so disappointed every time my beloved West Indies lose at cricket, and instead of facing facts and speaking the truth, the powers that be - the board members, the coaches, the managers, the captains, the players, and even some journalists - all roll out the excuses one after the other, time after time.

None of them, not one of them, has ever said, simply and for all to hear, that the problem, regardless of the reason for it, is a lack of skill or technical efficiency.

Match after match, defeat after defeat, it is always the same thing: the guys are not concentrating enough, the stroke selection of the batsmen is poor, the batsmen are not moving their feet, the pitch was too slow or too fast, too much spin or too much bounce or swing, and we will have to go back to the drawing board et cetera, et cetera.

When the West Indies capitulate, at home and abroad, to spin or to pace, spin or pace is always the problem or the culprit; and if they lose to, say, Australia, England, India, or Bangladesh to pace, swing, or spin, the conditions always take the brunt of the blame.

When the West Indies lost to New Zealand recently, it was the pace that caused it. When they lost to India recently, it was because the pitches responded to spin, and when they lost to Bangladesh, it was also because the pitches responded to spin.

The West Indies, however, forgot that New Zealand had a wonderful trio of fast bowlers, including a left-hander named Neil Wagner; that India have always possessed quality spin bowlers; that Bangladesh always possessed good spin bowlers; and also that the West Indies, when they were good, used to win against them, both at home and abroad.

When the West Indies were good, they defeated the opposition anywhere, in any conditions, and sometimes, most times, easily at that.

In 1975-76, the West Indies lost 1-5 to Australia in Australia, and they may have lost because the pitches were fast and bouncy. The reasons for their defeat, however, were the batting of Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, and Ian Redpath, and mainly because of the pace of Denis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, and Max Walker.

I remember also 1995 in England when the West Indies, with batsmen like Brian Lara, Carl Hooper, Richie Richardson, and Jimmy Adams and bowlers like Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Ian Bishop, and Kenneth Benjamin were ripping England apart and when they got to Birmingham, the pitch at Edgbaston, was shaved at both ends.

The pitch was "tailor made" to thwart the pace attack of the West Indies, and Wes Hall, the manager of the West Indies, in talking about the pitch before the game, said: "That's not a problem. They could play the match in a car park as far as I am concerned."

The match, which was scheduled for five days, finished before lunch on the third day, in favour of the West Indies.

In other words, the West Indies of yesteryear did not make excuses.

 

CONSISTENT GOOD PLAY

 

In those days, the West Indies cricketers loved West Indies cricket. They tried, all of them, to be the best players possible. They trained regularly, they were selected on performance, with just a few of them selected on potential, and their stay in the team was based on consistently good performances, nothing else.

The players were never, or hardly ever, selected on promise, especially after the coming of the regional tournament, and although there was a time when only the light-skinned were considered for the job, young, inexperienced players were never selected as captains, certainly not when senior and experienced players were available.

In everything in life, common sense suggests that to be good at the top, one should have been, or must have been, good earlier on, and yet the West Indies continue to select players who have not really proven themselves at the lower level, certainly not in terms of runs and wickets.

International cricket is not a place to "try" players, to groom players. It is a place, or should be a place, where one competes.

Whenever I remember some of the batsmen who have represented the West Indies recently, I sometimes think of batsmen like Neville Bonitto, Ralston Otto, Timur Mohammed, and Lockhart Sebastien, players who were never ever selected in spite of some solid performances during their time.

After the Bangladesh series, it was good to hear acting captain Kraigg Brathwaite, who himself is sometimes surprisingly guilty of poor stroke selection, speaking after the second Test and after Bangladesh had scored 508 and had dismissed the West Indies, on the same pitch and in the same match, for an embarrassing 111 and 213 runs.

"I can't blame the wicket. Some of the shots selected weren't good at all," he said.

That was, surprisingly, an honest assessment of the situation, almost the opposite of captain Carlos Brathwaite's words following the team's predictable loss in the second match after comfortably winning the first match of the T20 contest.

 

Off night

 

After saying that he did not think the team got it right early in their innings, as is their custom, after admitting that the team fielded poorly, as is their custom, he said, simply, that it was an "off night".

The team, which has so often been referred to as a young team, was destroyed in the Test series first by a really young player, 18-year-old off-spinner Nayeem Hasan on his Test debut, and then by Mehidy Hasan Miraj, another youngster, just three weeks past his 21st birthday.

The time for excuses is long gone. It is time to face the reality of the situation. The West Indies team needs to perform, and the players need to be properly prepared, or to prepare themselves, in order to do so.

There has long been talk of how great were the West Indies players, how great was the West Indies team, and that in swaggering around the world and being paid pretty well for it, the present players are living off the greatness of the past players and the team of yesterday.

That may or may not be so, but the players must remember that in cricket, like in most every other sport, or in most other things in life, a man, even in the West Indies, is as good, or is considered as good, as his last performance.