West Indies Cricket - The Renaissance

The West Indies team of the 70s and 80s that mesmerized the opposition with their riveting and brutal fast bowlers like Joel Garner, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding is no more there. West Indies, of late, have been struggling a lot to find genuine fast bowlers and finding the right balance to make it big on the international stage. It was quite degrading for the Windies fans that their team was compared to minnows like Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Ireland. After Darren Sammy took over the captaincy, changes became more evident in this team. They got a big boost with the advent of the Stanford 20-20 tournament. It helped West Indian Cricket in a big way by identifying a lot of West Indian stars like Keiron Pollard, Sunil Narine, Darren Bravo and Andre Russel.

The West Indian team has been performing exceedingly well in the ongoing T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka. Chris Gayle, Sunil Narine and Marlon Samuels have been the key players for West Indies so far. But yesterday saw Pollard, Badree and Rampaul coming into the show. Chris Gayle was extremely confident in the post match talk with Sanjay Manjrekar when he said, “Sorry Sri Lanka, the cup is ours”!

“He is an extremely superb batsman and a wonderful individual”, tweeted Sanjay Manjrekar. I also advocate the view of Sanjay Manjrekar.

A year ago, Chris Gayle was tagged as a nomad in search of money and fame and someone even tagged him as a rebel. And suddenly he has become a national hero! Quite ironical, isn’t it?

The present West Indies line-up has gone through quite a great transition. From the tall strong fast bowlers like Garner, Walsh and Ambrose, it has now started opening the attack with two spinners. Can’t imagine that really! In the game against Australia they opened the attack with Badree and Samuels. And not without getting success as they were highly successful in getting rid of Watson and Warner. Ravi Rampaul has been exceptional throughout the tournament, bowling well at the death and troubling the batsmen with the new ball at a reasonably good pace. Pollard showed against Australia why he is one of the best power hitters with his late blitz of 38*(15) and also later on bowled well to finish off the late Australian surge headed by George Bailey. The team is jelling well as a unit and the bottom line is they are enjoying their game.

So we should see a cracker of a match on Sunday. Not underestimating the talent and skill of the Lankans, also add to that the massive crowd support they will get when they take on the Caribbeans. However, Gayle simply seems like a man on a mission and it does seem that the big Jamaican is unstoppable this time around.

Being an ardent Windies fan, I wish the West Indies team the best of luck for the T20 finals against the mighty Lankans come the 7th of October.

Come on Caribbeans, time to get the Gangnam going!