Chris Gayle’s nomination as West Indies captain for the coming tour Down Under is beyond comprehension. Far from standing firm, the West Indies Cricket Board has capitulated in the most craven manner. Never mind that their captain and senior players have let them down badly and repeatedly.

Never mind that many have been inactive, almost inert. Never mind that Gayle’s team was mauled in England or that a shadow side had unavoidably been sent to the Champions Trophy. Never mind that Gayle himself has seemed bent on destruction. Still the board accommodated the ringleader of the rebellion.

Gayle is a busted flush. Sympathisers say he cares about West Indian cricket. If so, he has a curious way of showing it. Appointed on a wing and a prayer by authorities desperate to stop the inexorable slide in West Indian cricket, the languid Jamaican has been a profound disappointment. If nothing else, his abject performance during last winter’s Test series in England ought to have cost him his job.

Given the honour of captaining the party and therefore following in the footsteps of Sir Frank Worrell, Sir Garfield Sobers and Clive Lloyd, the sunglassed opener promptly signed to play for the Kolkata Klowns (or whatever) in the IPL and arranged to join the team a week before the first Test. Eager to put even more plunder in his pocket, he lingered longer, played an extra match and arrived a couple of days before the series began. So much for leadership. So much for the tradition of West Indian cricket. So much for Test cricket.

Inevitably, West Indies were routed. By all accounts they barely put up a fight. Admittedly, it was cold in Durham but that hardly explains, let alone excuses, an abject display. If it was not the lowest point in Caribbean cricket, then it was mighty close. And Gayle was the leader. Mostly he stood at slip, smothered in sweaters, watching as his team was torn apart. Read more…

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Caribbean cricket could splinter into individual nations if it does not learn from T&T’s spirited run in the Champions League

Trinidad & Tobago’s joyful progress to the semi-final of the Champions League could not have carried a clearer message to the dolts and ne’er-do-wells who have been responsible for the decline of West Indies cricket.

Trinidad have played with unity and passion in the Champions League only weeks after West Indies, embroiled in a prolonged power struggle between the board and players’ representatives, brought international cricket into disrepute by sending a reserve team to the Champions Trophy in South Africa.

T&T’s impressive captain, Daren Ganga, has spoken intelligently about the “great legacy” of West Indies cricket and how proper investment is long overdue to respect and continue that legacy. It cannot be guaranteed that the G&T-sipping crowd are listening to T&T. But the warning could not have been starker, with Ganga visualising a break-up of West Indies cricket into individual nations if the various stakeholders do not get their act together. “I tell you that if that doesn’t happen then it is inevitable that countries will go separately,” he said. “West Indies cricket cannot afford the turmoil that it has now.”

Ganga is not the first Trinidadian to voice such sentiments. In July, T&T’s chief executive, Forbes Persaud, admitted that if the West Indies Cricket Board continued to blunder along then he favoured Trinidad requesting permission to play as an individual nation, just as Trinidad’s football team do.

It is an outcome that cricket’s major nations rightly fear. The International Cricket Council has charged the WICB’s new chief executive, Ernest Hilaire, with sorting out the mess – and he already seems to be making progress, with optimism abounding that a full-strength West Indies side will tour Australia next month. Hilaire has a Masters degree in economics and an MPhil in international relations from Cambridge University, both of which should come Read more…

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As the committee men work out how to crack the Champions League dollar, the county coaches have problems of a different sort to solve before embarking upon another campaign against the world’s best Twenty20 outfits.

The fact one English side, Somerset, reached the final eight just about fulfilled the minimum requirement for the two county teams. Unfortunately just one victory, by one wicket off the final ball, from six matches proves that luck played a part in their progression.

Neither side were humiliated at any time and enjoyed good spells, usually with the ball, in each match, apart from a Trescothick-light Somerset’s final defeat against New South Wales when they looked exhausted and dreaming of the flight home.

But the usual English one-day weakness of a lack of power in the batting line-up cost Sussex and Somerset a chance of making any real impact in India.

Only five county batters featured in the top 50 strike rates. Luke Wright was the only Englishman to hit more than one six in the entire tournament and Wes Durston recorded the solitary county half-century.

Tactics were often rigid and only once did a county employ spin during the powerplay, despite the fact slow bowling has been the tournament’s key to stopping an onslaught. The intensity of the tournament, travel and media interest may have been overwhelming at times and both counties looked tired after a long summer.

It showed that Trinidad and Tobago have spent two months preparing for this trip and Somerset were not helped by the fact they were twice followed on stage by the Caribbean side.

They are chock full of clean hitters and one batsman, Daren Ganga, capable of sticking the team together if things go awry. They threw a 19 year-old, Adrian Barath, in to open the batting in their final last-eight match and he responded with 63 from 41 balls. It was his Read more…

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