Oral Tracey | Law was a failure!

The narrative dominating the analysis of the performance of recently resigned head coach of the West Indies cricket team, Stuart Law, as it relates to improving the fortunes of the Test team, has been instructive, to say the least, in helping us to better understand the extent of the quagmire we find ourselves in.

Why is there even a debate whether a Windies cricket coach is a success when his record of guiding the team in 15 Test matches shows him winning six, losing seven, and drawing two, with an ordinary 40 per cent win ratio, and a 46 per cent loss ratio? The Windies are also still ranked an embarrassing number eight of 10 Test-playing nations, only above Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Yet, Law's name is being mentioned in the same sentence as success, showing the desperate depths to which our standards have fallen.

Considering that the results and rankings of the Windies have plummeted in the other two versions of the game to all-time lows, all things considered, Stuart Law should be unceremoniously chased out of town as an abysmal failure, instead of being softly celebrated as some kind of success.

We have become such pitiful apologists for mediocrity in Windies cricket that we now engage in vibrant and passionate debates about the inclusion or exclusion of a batsman averaging 26 or 27 getting into the team at the expense of another batsman who averages 28 or 29. A batsman who scores two or three half-centuries in a regional season is now regarded as having an impressive run of form and automatically becomes a candidate for Test selection. Such is the shameless low to which we have set the bar.

STARVED OF QUALITY

I remember vividly, upon seeing rising young Jamaican pacer Oshane Thomas deliver that super first ball to trap Chris Gayle leg before wicket in the 2017 Hero Caribbean Premier League season, saying aloud then that this young speedster should be in the Windies set up right now. That is the kind of impulsive desperation this has taken over Windies cricket, because we have become so starved of quality players consistently producing quality performances.

As it relates to coaching and the direction Cricket West Indies should go for Law's replacement, some of us are still extremely uncomfortable with the decision of the board to have an Australian coach, in tandem with an English chief executive officer and a South African bowling coach to prepare our dear Windies team.

We are not Bangladesh or Zimbabwe. We are the West Indians, once kingpins of the game. We have been there and done that. We know what it takes to be world champions of the sport, and yet we chose to mortgage out the development of our players to rivals, whom we used to annihilate.

None of these foreign coaches have done significantly better than our regional coaches as far as improving the fortunes of the Windies Test team is concerned. Why, then, the obsession with handing over our cricket to foreigners?

There are indeed a myriad of issues negatively impacting the fortunes of Test cricket in the Caribbean, but coaching is the least of them. As former fast-bowling great Sir Andy Roberts puts it, "Cricket West Indies should ponder the wisdom of wasting money in the hiring of these highly paid foreign coaches, without getting the commensurate returns." Sir Andy is correct.

The harsh reality is that not even the most skilled engineer or building contractor can construct a high-rise structure without the necessary raw material. At the moment, no such foreign contractor, or indeed a local or regional contractor, can erect any significant structure in Windies Test cricket, because there is so precious little raw material available.