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Saturday, Apr 21, 2007
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A dead game invested with heavy emotion

S. Ram Mahesh

Last hurrah for Lara; last match for Fletcher as England's coach

Bridgetown: Few dead games are invested with as much emotion as Saturday's Super Eight match — the last in the 2007 World Cup's league phase — between the West Indies and England here at the Kensington Oval.

Both sides find themselves at the end of defining eras. Both will lose men who've done much, but have been subjected to severe criticism in recent times.

Photographs of Duncan Fletcher — that inscrutable of men — rubbing tears from his eyes as Paul Nixon wraps a commiserating arm around have prompted surprise. `Tch. Tch. Duncan and emotion!' are the words that do the rounds.

But, for all coach Fletcher's achievements in taking an England side, the worst in the world in 1999, and turning it into a unit capable of the wholesome cricket needed to regain the Ashes in 2005, the West Indies has the bigger gap to fill.

There has been a lot of revisionism centred around Brian Lara in the last six months: the thrust has been to separate Lara, the glorious, multi-layered, soul-touching batsman, from Lara, the moody, manipulative, selfish captain.

It's a line of thought both easy and tempting. If it were true, it supplies Lara the clay feet, which make his genius endearingly fallible. His failings had been primarily off the field, and hence the clay feet ascribed were of a different mud; but failing at captaincy a third time was convenient: it was failure at a cricket skill.

For the romantic, the compromising light of his failure silhouetted his batting genius; for the Lara-hater, it cut him down to size, all the better to trade punches with; for the neutral, it was a puzzling phenomenon: great players do not make great captains is cop-out, but was this a case in point? As ever with Lara, it's tough to conclude. Tactically, through the home series against India last year, he was exceptional. His angles in field placement were customised to the grounds, and he had his tallest men at short-cover and short mid-wicket. Invariably, a bowling change brought a wicket.

Was he then a good tactician, but a poor man-manager? Again, the evidence is flaky. To a man, the squad that won the 2004 Champions Trophy sang his praise.

Dubious decisions

But, some of his decisions pertaining to team selection this World Cup have been dubious. And the spat with Andy Roberts wasn't the first instance of in-fighting becoming public.

Perhaps the best words on Lara were written by Fazeer Mohammed, a respected Trinidad journalist. The inelegant gist is as follows: Lara has vision; but he is guilty of shaping it too much in his ideals to be universally bought into.

What can't be denied is Lara is a complex, interesting fellow, and compels an all-consuming interest. Often the broader context — this preview for instance — is undermined.

It shouldn't be, for there is much at stake in Saturday's match. Of immediacy are psychological points ahead of the West Indies's tour of England.

"England is coming off a disastrous Ashes series and a disastrous World Cup," said Lara. "Saturday has to be a continuation of this from them to assist us. But, I'm sure they won't be taking this lightly." Ramnaresh Sarwan, who said his captaincy ambitions hadn't changed for the last year and a half, added a touch trenchantly: "We must draw first blood."

But, the long term is of greater interest. England needs to sort out its approach to the one-day format. For a country that has played the limited-overs format longer and more prolifically at the domestic level than any other, England has little to show. As captain Michael Vaughan said, the time has come to assess the best course of action.

Not quite easy

The West Indies needs progress in baby steps as well. "It's not easy," said Lara. "As a nation we need a plan for the next five to ten years." Daren Powell has shown through the World Cup that he's as capable as any of disturbing the top-order with bounce: long may he continue.

Jerome Taylor hasn't quite captured the rhythm that saw him hat-trick against Australia in the Champions Trophy, but the thought of him, Powell, and Corey Collymore hunting together in England isn't without possibilities.

One hopes Devon Smith plays despite his failure against Bangladesh, and makes capital against the side he has scored a Test century. He could prove a key member of the new West Indies: indeed if the side is to prosper, men like him will need to make the transformation from promising to good to great.

The teams (from): England: Michael Vaughan (capt.), Ed Joyce, Ian Bell, Andrew Strauss, Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood, Andrew Flintoff, Paul Nixon (wk), Ravinder Bopara, Jamie Dalrymple, Monty Panesar, Stuart Broad, James Anderson, Liam Plunkett, and Sajid Mahmood.

West Indies: Brian Lara (capt.), Ian Bradshaw, Dwayne Bravo, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Corey Collymore, Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard, Daren Powell, Denesh Ramdin (wk), Marlon Samuels, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Lendl Simmons, Dwayne Smith, Devon Smith, and Jerome Taylor.

Umpires: Rudi Koertzen and Simon Taufel; Third umpire: Billy Bowden; Match referee: Ranjan Madugalle. Hours of play (IST): 7 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. and 11.15 p.m. till close.