Editorial | It’s batting, stupid!

It is a bit of news that perhaps is yet to be absorbed by regional cricket fans: the West Indies will have to scrap with the minnows, the second- and third-tier teams of international cricket, hoping to qualify for a place in next year’s Cricket World Cup of One Day International (ODI) matches. In ODIs, each side bats for 50 overs.

The West Indies are in this position because their number 10 ranking in ODIs was not good enough to get them automatic qualification, which is reserved for the top eight teams and the hosts. The West Indies were edged out of one of those slots last month when Afghanistan beat Ireland in an ODI to statistically put themselves ahead of the Caribbean side, although two of the three ODIs the West Indies will play in India later this month will be within the qualifying period to amass the necessary points. Further, Zimbabwe, ranked 11th in ODIs, received automatic qualification as co-host, with South Africa, of the tournament.

On reflection, the situation in which the West Indies find themselves may not be as shocking as assumed to their supporters. After decades of uncertain and mostly indifferent performances by their team in all formats of the game, low expectations, even as they cling to hope, are by now baked in. Indeed, the West Indies didn’t automatically qualify for the 2023 edition of the ODI World Cup. They were forced into a qualifying tournament with the small fry, but weren’t among the top two performers to make it to the main event.

So, the current situation, even if the West Indies fail to progress beyond next February’s qualifiers, is unlikely to be met with the hysteria that washed over the region when they crashed out early from the T20 World Cup. That event was made particularly bitter because a team that had twice won the tournament was beaten by the part-time cricketers of Scotland and Ireland. That was seen as symbolic of how far West Indies cricket had fallen, leading to a hurried summit of regional cricket stakeholders, after which Cricket West Indies (CWI) established a commission to pinpoint what went wrong.

That commission blamed a host of factors for the poor showing, including:

• underpreparedness of the team;

• that the West Indies played in unaccustomed cold and blustery conditions;

• the absence from the team of at least one key batsman; and

• the overall poor outcomes of West Indies cricket, exacerbated by the migration of the region’s best players to lucrative T20 leagues.

“WI Cricket does not lack for talent, but our small size in comparison with other cricketing nations means that we cannot afford to lose any talented players,” the commission said. “Cricket West Indies (CWI) must develop and create clear pathways for the identification, development and management of talent. Otherwise, WI cricket runs the risk of being strip-mined by other professional leagues that can afford to harvest and develop our players for their benefit.”

That observation is essentially correct, but misses, or glosses over, two critical factors necessary for the rescue of West Indies cricket. The first is how CWI perceives its mission. The second is that cricket can only be played if it is played, the foundation of which is the art of batting. Batters with good technique, including the capacity to engage in the split-second calculus necessary to face the most difficult bowling, can transfer those skills to all formats of the game. Rarely is what former Australian batsman Greg Chappell characterised as the “upper body exercise” employed in T20 batting readily transferable to the longer formats of the game.

Or, as Mr Chappell put it in a recent article: “Batting, in other words, is an immense challenge of cognitive and physical coordination - a discipline of complex calculations and decision-making that takes many innings to develop.”

Yet, there is a dearth of serious cricket played in the Caribbean. This year, because of budgetary constraints, the region’s first-class competition was reduced to 11 matches. The six core regional teams were divided into three groups of two teams. Each group played three bilateral matches. The team that ended with the most points was an automatic finalist. The next best two teams played each other to determine the other finalist. This was the latest cutting and carving of the competition.

The latest system is a recipe for further disaster in a region whose leading batsmen in the longer format of the game average in the mid-30s. It is not surprising that, in 85 ODIs since 2020, the West Indies have won only 35 per cent and lost 59 per cent. ODI cricket asks top-order batters to construct an innings. Of their last 51 Tests, they won 12, or 23.5 per cent, but lost 49 per cent.

But the deeper crisis is that CWI’s owners, the regional territorial boards, cling to their control of the entity, failing to recognise West Indies cricket as a public good that belongs to all stakeholders. Which makes implementation of the Patterson and Wehby reports on reform still relevant.

West Indies were unable to make the 2023 ODI World Cup via direct entry and had to play the Qualifier, where they finished fifth in the Super Six stage and ultimately lost out. It was the first World Cup that they ever missed, which in turn led to their missing the 2025 Champions Trophy, a competition they haven’t played since 2013.