Ja's best cricket team ever?

By Orville Higgins

JAMAICA'S RECORD-breaking run of 13 straight regional four-day victories is, no doubt, a monumental achievement. When you add that to the fact that we are five-time four-day regional defending champions, then one must acknowledge that this team is indeed special. This team is unquestionably the most successful cricket team in our history, easily the most dominant. However, is it necessarily the best we have ever had?

That's the question that has dominated the airwaves over the last week or so. I maintain that we are going overboard when we claim this team is better than some we have had in the past merely because of its success in winning titles. We go badly astray if we argue that way. To say that this team is better than another team because they win more titles is to argue that teams which win the same amount of titles are equally as good. That certainly cannot stand up to any intelligent scrutiny. To determine which is the best team in our history, we can't necessarily look at which is the most decorated. The 1965 Kingston College Manning Cup team, for example, is widely considered the best schoolboy football team in our history. Other teams would have won the Manning Cup, other schoolboy teams would have enjoyed similar or longer periods of dominance, but that team holds sway in public opinion.

Those who saw that team will swear that that aggregation of players have never been bettered. They rave about the quality of the play and indeed the players, and speak glowingly about how close that team came to performing at the very highest level possible for schoolboys anywhere in the world. Let's apply the same standards to this Jamaican cricket team and ask the same questions. Is this the best group of cricketers we have ever assembled? Is this cricket team playing a quality of cricket that is better than all we have seen in the past? Is this bunch of cricketers performing at a level remotely close to what are the prevailing top standards? To anybody with any inkling of objectivity, the answer to all three questions must be a resounding no! To reason that this is the best team we have ever had in cricket is, therefore, allowing emotions to cloud our better judgement.

LATE 80s Ja Team

Surely, the Jamaican team that won the four-day and one-day tournament of the late 80s and early 90s must be far superior to the current team. I am looking at a scorecard with Jamaica playing Trinidad in 1989 as I write. The batting line-up is Wayne Lewis, Delroy Morgan, Jimmy Adams, Mark Neita, Cleveland Davidson, Robert Haynes, Marlon Tucker, Nehemiah Perry, Michael Holding, Courtney Walsh, and Patrick Patterson. Is anyone suggesting that the Tamar Lambert team would have a chance against that team? If we struggle to make 200 against average regional bowling (average by world standards), what chance would we stand against a potential world pace attack of Patterson, Holding and Walsh. We struggle to bat spin now. Would we have a prayer against Tucker and Haynes and Perry in the same attack? Conversely, Would Nikita Miller and Odean Brown be able to take 10 wickets for next to nothing against batsmen of the ilk of Adams and Morgan and company? We can't be serious.

The corollary to this argument is that Tamar Lambert is the best captain we have ever had, again going by straight results. Let me say Tamar is an excellent captain, probably the best in the region now. But best ever? Based merely on winning record? Please! To the people who subscribe to this rather irrational argument I ask one question. Or more accurately, I submit one scenario. Brendan Taylor is the captain of Zimbabwe and Graeme Smith is the captain of South Africa. Taylor will lose virtually every game he captains, while Smith will win virtually all the time. Does that mean Graeme Smith is necessarily a better captain than Taylor? Isn't that purely a function of the quality of your team, versus the quality of the opponents? When we talk about greatest team and greatest captain ever, shouldn't we be looking at whom people are playing against? Too many among us not only don't understand the game, but argue without the benefit of logic and plain common sense.

Orville Higgins is a sportscaster and talk-show host on KLAS FM. Email comments to columns@gleanerjm.com