Take them dancing

March 24, 2004

Many are condemning our cricketers as worthless, undisciplined and gutless. What such assumptions presuppose is that the players today possess all the required technical expertise and that therefore their disappointing performances of recent years are the result of in-depth character flaws that includes an inability to concentrate on the job at hand. There are those among us who beg to disagree.

The salient fact is that West Indian players today are just not technically equipped. In the past West Indian cricketers honed their skills playing county cricket in England on a daily basis and in the kind of climatic conditions that forced batsmen to develop the capacity to move to the swinging ball.

For the past two decades county cricket has been closed off to us and there is nothing on a daily basis to replace it. We have to find a way to get would-be Test players in the Caribbean to play everyday, either through being contracted to the WICB or to corporate sponsored professional clubs, until they are Test-cricket ready.

If one were to look seriously at our batsmen at Sabina recently, when we were bowled out for 47 by England, one will observe that almost all of them got out because they failed to move their feet, particularly the back foot, an essential prerequisite if a batsman is to get properly behind the line and the length of the bowling.

It is a common understanding among us that good batsmanship involves the ability to dance. The perfecting of most strokes requires at minimum two, if not three, distinct movements: the shuffle across to pick up the "line" of trajectory and then the move onto the front foot or onto the back foot according to the "length." The great ones usually have the time to adjust and so compete all three moves.

That is why we say that our master batsmen of the past were dancers. West Indians were accustomed to talk about "dancing across or down the wicket" to pace bowling or to mystery spinners to pick up the line before the ball hits the turf.

Past West Indian opening bat Roy Fredericks' 169 at Perth against a ferocious Australian pace attack was a case in point of sheer "ballet dancing."

They were dancers all, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards, Alvin Kallicharan, Rohan Baboolal Kanhai, Sobers, etc, in their prime, in their heydays. Kalli's destruction of Lillee and Thompson in England was a glory to behold.

If we can use those innings of Roy and Kalli as demonstrative lessons to our upcoming batsmen, we certainly cannot use any of Chanderpaul's since he is always so square-on in stance and would most likely fall if he tries to dance.

We have lost that power of the dance. It is no longer there. Only Lara has it when he is "on." All of the present crop of batsmen lack the ability. Chris Gayle and Wavell Hinds would be "greats" and bat forever if only they could come to master the technique of dance. They in particular possess feet of lead. Ganga is one-dimensional, he makes one movement: he either comes onto the front foot or is onto the back foot, punto final.

In this same place years ago, we called on them all to "dance and break loose." We even called on the Cricket Academy that was being set up to remember what particular forms of the game moulded us from childhood, made us the greats who ruled the cricket world and made us the envy of all Test-playing countries, and to inculcate these forms into the programme of the academy. This is what was actually said:

"...However we must not forget to incorporate into the academy the great indulgences that made us. We played the cricket game of 'pass out' and 'fight fuh innings' at every available moment. No other form of the game can get a batsman to move his feet like 'pass out,' and no other form can make a bowler do more tricks with the ball and sharpen the reflexes of fielders as 'fight fuh innings.'

"Take our professionals back there, to the things we once knew, to the things that served to mould us..."

We, for example, grew up "pelting mangoes," so when fielding we could hit the wicket from any direction. Today that is another lost art, simply because no youth's hunger today is satiated by his ability to throw accurately.

The athletic coaches we understand used our method and style of pelting mangoes to teach young athletes how to throw the javelin. The academy administrators will do well to remember that

But there is more. If Test cricket were to be organised like the football leagues around the world, we would be left to wallow in the minor divisions until we raised our game back to established Test standards.

In the course of re-building we need to understand how development comes about. Listen to what we advanced in 2000:

"...Everything has to be seen relative to its opposite in order to get at the reality rather than be swayed and be duped by mere illusion. For instance, we would say today that the West Indies cricket team presently cannot bat because they cannot bowl. The bowling to which our batsmen are accustomed is stuck in the past."

Our batsmen do not practise with the help of modern pace and spin bowling because such bowling just does not exist here. The New Zealand captain expressed it best when he disparagingly dismissed our bowlers as mere "bounce bowlers." They hammer the ball midway into the pitch and wait for something to happen.

That's the kind of crap our batsmen get used to, and make their huge scores against in the regional tournaments to cement their Test places. But then they come up against modern bowlers and the disaster is imminent.

Any bowler who pitches it up on a full length or just a tad short and gets movement off the seam will destroy them time and time again. Simply because they are not used to it, having gotten accustomed to making runs, scoring tons, without ever developing the ways of dance.

We say to the WICB, take them all dancing. Now!