The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : It's England's turn to play chin music

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Sunday, Apr 25, 2004

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It's England's turn to play chin music

Celebrations of England's historic victory in the Caribbean have been tinged with a surprising undertone of regret. There's been little gloating over the old enemy's current discomforts, which would certainly not have been the case had the enemy in question been Australia. Instead, there is a widely shared sadness over the miserable plight of the losing side, once mighty, now — at best — mediocre.

For cricket-lovers in England, even those whose psychic well-being seems welded to the England team's variable fortunes, the West Indies has long symbolised both joy and excellence in cricket. Even as the Caribbean cavaliers repeatedly demolished the lingering pretensions of their old colonial masters, the children of the former rulers gasped in delight at the power and audacity of their game. They brought devastating technical superiority and ebullient spontaneity to the playing field, and in doing so reminded more than one generation of English cricket fans just what the game was all about.

Until the 2004 encounter, England had not won a series in the Caribbean in 36 years. During that interval, England played 29 Tests in the West Indies and won only four. Indeed, between 1976 and 1989 England failed to win a single Test against the West Indies, home or away, and lost seven straight series to it.

West Indian dominance owed much to the extraordinary performances of a dynasty of fast bowlers. In the course of this golden age, Malcolm Marshall took 127 English wickets in 26 Tests at an average of 19.18. Michael Holding took 96 at an average of 21.15 and Joel Garner 92 at an average of 17.93. Add in Roberts, Croft, Patterson, Ambrose and Walsh and you begin to get the measure of the West Indies superiority over teams that included batsmen of the calibre of Gower, Botham, Boycott, Gooch and Lamb.

In 2004, it was England's turn to crank up the chin music. Steve Harmison led the pack with his seven for 12 in Jamaica and six for 61 in Port of Spain, and there were five-wicket hauls by Simon Jones and Andrew Flintoff, plus Matthew Hoggard's morale-boosting hat-trick in Barbados. This was the strongest England pace attack seen in years, but it may well have been flattered by the ineptitude of the West Indian batsmen.

The humiliation of England's 46 all out in Port of Spain in 1994 is now balanced by the West Indies' 47 all out at Kingston and the nearly equally lame 94 all out at Bridgetown. Lara's face-saving quadruple century in the final Test was scored on a benign Antigua pitch prepared precisely to forestall a repeat of those galling collective failures. For all its glory, it will not erase the memory of the three previous Tests, which England won by the decisive margins of 10, seven and eight wickets.

Much ink has been spilled over the mystery of West Indies' decline as a cricket power, and a number of propositions have been advanced to explain it. But what really requires explanation is not so much the West Indies' current mediocrity as its two decades of sublime supremacy. After all, the combined population of the cricket-playing islands is a mere six million, boasting a total GDP of only $28 billion (New Zealand has two thirds as many people, but its GDP is three times as large). It was always remarkable that a sequence of world-beaters should have sprung from such an impoverished and economically marginal society, one comprised, moreover, of frequently squabbling nation-states.

Nonetheless, in the 1970s the West Indies became the game's first real global champion. Buoyed up by the anti-colonial and anti-racist movements of the era, the peripatetic cricketers of the Caribbean forged a new unity and played with unrivalled purpose. Fans of all nations found their blend of swagger and skill, relentless focus and inspired flourish irresistibly seductive.

However, for many prominent voices in the English cricket media, the spectacle of the former colonial subjects holding sway on the playing field was unbearable. The editor of the Wisden annual raged against the "viciousness" of the famous four-pronged pace attack, which, he warned, was "changing the very nature of the game." Wisden Cricket Monthly said that the West Indies cricket "is founded on vengeance and violence and fringed by arrogance." Others bemoaned the "downright thuggery" of this "army of mercenaries."

Many commentators were also irked by the visible and vocal presence of large numbers of West Indian supporters at England's home matches. It was frequently observed, with indignant umbrage, that the Oval in south London had become an "away ground for England." But in the late eighties banners and placards, drums and whistles were banned from English grounds, and rising ticket prices and advance credit card bookings elbowed out the largely working class West Indies fans. Now the roles are reversed. It's England which is cheered by an army of travelling supporters, while Caribbean descendants in Britain seem to have lost interest in the game.

Nonetheless, this summer's five-Test series is already a sell-out. Strangely, but also logically, many English fans will attend the matches hoping to witness a revival in the West Indies' fortunes. Without the islanders' distinctive genius, the global game, for all its current strength, seems incomplete.

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