Every West Indies squad at a T20 World Cup has a Dream Team feel to it – even if they don’t always deliver
If you are keen on finding out where all the highly skilled West Indies cricketers are, just look around the T20 circuit and you’ll find more than you could bargain for.
Supermarkets generally shut down by 10pm at the latest in Antigua. Not on Wednesday night though. The West Indies were in action after all, that too against England in St Lucia in a night game. And it meant that every supermarket around the capital city of St John’s, big or small, with a television set was obliged to remain open for as long as the match went on.
I found it out for myself when I spotted a bit of a crowd outside one of these “supermarts” at about 11.30pm, around the time England had unfortunately started to take the game away from the home team.
“Dem gonna need some wickets nah,” yells one of the customers/viewers, to which the store owner goes, “Dem nah get it now. Only licks.” All while checking out and accepting my payment for the two fruit yoghurts and couple of apples I’d bought. The perfect night for some late-hour shopping. As England get closer to the target, the dozen or so hangers-on leave, with only the hardcore believers staying back for the final rites.
“Eh boii, the West Indies can lose from anywhere and dem win from anywhere,” the man in charge tells you. I realise it’s likely he’ll double up as a post-match analyst and leave him to it.
It was pretty much the same at the restaurant I’d been in earlier. Distracted waiters and very slow service with the focus squarely on the two flat-screen wall-mounted TVs, with everyone from the bartender to the lady in the kitchen barking out orders to Nicholas Pooran and Rovman Powell in St Lucia instead. “Heet dat baal, heet dat baal,” echoing around the open-air eatery.
Similar scenes would have played out all over the Caribbean on Wednesday night, with the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground in St Lucia the epicentre of all the action. It was a reminder if anything for all the naysayers who jump on the bandwagon of writing the epitaph for cricket in the Caribbean or their love for their West Indies cricket team. That the West Indies still matters a lot to the people across the islands. That the West Indies still control the pulse and the spirit of these isles.
For as the late great Tony Cozier, the voice of Caribbean cricket for nearly five decades, used to tell me, “What the West Indian cricket team represents for the people of our region is much more than a game of cricket. Wins and losses work differently here. What matters the most is pride.”
I was very fortunate to call Tony a close friend towards the end of his life, It was around the time his TV commentary commitments had begun to reduce, but never did he lose his passion to talk about West Indies cricket.
It wasn’t always positive. It was always candid and from the heart though. Two narratives about cricket in the Caribbean that bothered Tony the most though involved this constant chatter about people no longer caring about the West Indies team. And the other being that rather lazy stereotyping around young West Indians heading off to the US in search of glory in American sport, the NBA in particular.
“Show me the last Bajan or Antiguan NBA star and I’ll at least consider acknowledging this sham of an argument,” he’d say.
Tony unfortunately passed away before the T20 revolution really took off, in terms of leagues mushrooming all around the world. It was still around a time the likes of Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard were the only major West Indies names to be making the most of the free market that was beginning to develop on the back of the IPL.
That market has burgeoned to such an extent that franchise cricket is now a major stakeholder in the future of the sport. So, you are keen on finding out where all the highly skilled West Indies cricketers are, just look around the T20 circuit and you’ll find more than you could bargain for.
It’s just that they don’t dominate Test or ODI cricket the way they used to. It’s just that their fans don’t have the same expectations from their Test and ODI teams as they used to.
But you cannot talk T20 cricket, without the West Indies featuring majorly in the conversation. Whether it’s due to them being the first team to have won two men’s T20 World Cups, or the fact that there is hardly a franchise on the circuit, which doesn’t have at least one if not multiple West Indian players in their ranks.
And even if they don’t always come to the party, every West Indies squad at a T20 World Cup has a Dream Team feel to it. Players who otherwise spend their time starring in and headlining the global leagues coming together once every two years to create their own legacy. That in many ways is the crux of the matter.
That it’s not really the motivation to play cricket that’s taken a major hit, as some theorists may say, but it’s more the motivation to play for the West Indies – at all times – that has seen a major change across the Caribbean. And you couldn’t blame them either.
There are multiple factors at play here. The West Indies team of yore, under Clive Lloyd, who if nothing had one uniting force at the core, that they were all born in colonised countries, and grew up in freshly independent nations.
Unlike the current lot, who are all born in their respective islands and 50-60 years on have created their own identities, and their loyalties. While the West Indies does bring the islands together, you’re still dealing with different currencies and exchange rates and other more real-life factors that separate a Trini from a Jamaican, for example.
Imagine you and your colleagues earned $100 a week in your job, but then when you went home those $100 were worth $200 in your local currency and $10,000 in mine. That’s just how diverse and at some levels disparate the differences are. It’s no surprise that cricket is the only real field where the concept of the West Indies has even managed to survive.
I remember interviewing Marlon Samuels and Chris Gayle after the West Indies won their first T20 World Cup in 2012. Both spent the first 10 minutes talking about how much their win mattered to Jamaica before referencing the West Indies.
But, still, when it comes to playing together on the field, they continue to put their differences aside and actually do rally around the West Indies.
Not to forget, every time you think the T20 league world will swallow up West Indies cricket for good, you have an Andre Russell come back from a hiatus to enhance his already-impressive legacy by adding another World Cup crown to his name.
It’s the same with the crowds in the Caribbean. Even if Test matches are played in front of largely sparse crowds, they flock to their stadiums to watch their Dream Team put on the kind of show only they can. Or, they stand outside supermarkets late at night shouting out instructions to their beloved players on the TV screen.
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