WI vs NZ - a comparison

[mikesiva]

THere are so many similarities between West Indies and New Zealand, not just in cricket, but also in other factors outside of cricket, but which influence the sport....

1) Small population: like the Windies, NZ has a small population of around six million. That means a much smaller pool of talented players from which to choose your team.

2) Weak economy: the Caribbean countries are poor, and rely on tourism and agriculture for income. As a result, there's not much money to invest in developing the game of cricket. NZ's economy is a satellite of their larger Aussie neighbour, and they tend to lose their best managerial and economic talent to Australia.

3) Weak cricket boards: little money coming in often means poor management, misguided principles, player disputes, and a lack of leadership. BOth WI and NZ seem to have followed similar paths in recent times.

4) Punched above their weight for a while: back in the 1970s-90s, NZ had superstars such as RIchard Hadlee and the Crowe brothers, and batsmen John Wright and Jeremy Coney weren't too bad either. As a result, they won matches and even series against teams they weren't expected to beat. This probably lead to an unrealistic expectation that when these players left, NZ would just go thru a short slump before bouncing back to glory once again.

5) Sacked "mediocre" senior players, and replaced them with even worse young and untried players: blaming senior players like Martin Crowe for the demise of their team, selectors like Glenn Turner kicked Martin Crowe out of the team, and chose a string of untried, green and inexperienced players under an equally undistinguished Lee Germon (remember him?), who had never proven himself at the world stage. The expectation was that they were moving forward with the new youngsters, and that in time this side would become a good one in a number of years. That was in the mid-1990s....

6) Cricket is a secondary sport: in the Caribbean, cricket is no longer the premier sport of the region. In Jamaica, athletics and football come ahead of cricket, while in Trinidad, football is also number one. THroughout the eastern Caribbean, individual successes in athletics have started to outshine continued disappointments in cricket. In NZ, cricket struggled in rugby's shadow, but now that NZ are world rugby champs, that situation is expected to worsen. Talented young sportsmen are more likely to try out for rugby (athletics/football) first, and then cricket later....

About 15 years ago, NZ decided to get rid of their senior players, and build for the future. But are they any closer to scaling the pinnacle of the sport they once vied to dominate? Rather, it seems to be their fate to fight it out for the wooden spoon. What makes those optimists among us think that we may fare any better than NZ?

[mapoui]

About 15 years ago, NZ decided to get rid of their senior players, and build for the future. But are they any closer to scaling the pinnacle of the sport they once vied to dominate? Rather, it seems to be their fate to fight it out for the wooden spoon. What makes those optimists among us think that we may fare any better than NZ

well for one thing we have a better cricket tradition...just about the greatest in the history of the game.

from the start we were always among the best, producing the greatest players the game has ever seen.... bar only Don Bradman... probably!

then as now the curse of westindies cricket has been administration.

westindies wud have been pre-war, 19-thirties winners, were it not for the racism dat assured mediocre white players the captaincy.

westindies, while consistently producing the most brilliant players were consistent losers until winning consistently under the most qualified captains, who happened to be blac.

westindies have completed a very bad circle, in which we are now back to the worst administrative leadership whch now forces the worse leaders on the team... which leadership happens to be black at this time.

the westindies are now like the old planter dynasty, with unacountable leadership that appoints captains deh want and not players who are qualified to lead the side.

this is just like John Goddard, dennis Atkinson, Jeffrey Stollmeyer...the who were all appointed for non-cricketing reasons... Darren Sammy has been appointed and now leads the westindies.

westindies are socially are back to square one, stuck in a dictatorship of a neo-planter class..those blac people-black elites... who replaced the planters at independence and chose to continue planter social organisation and social relations in the region...a strucutre that now finds expression in westindies cricket administration, producing once again a train of bad results that the old way produced all the time, back in the day.

its back to the bad old days, which are here again...unlike 'happy days', which are definetly not.

[AFRO]

Any dumb idiot should be able to fathom that CRICKET GOES IN CYCLES, no team stays dominant forever which is why us and Australia aren't in the top three right now, chucking out "senior players" makes absolute sense IF THEY WERE LOSING FOR 15 YEARS ANYWAY, so with the selectors putting their faith is the best group of young players IN THE WORLD right now it at least gives us hope for a better future ahead instead of seeing the same clowns embarrass the great WI shirt series after series,

India will feel the heat in the near future when Laxman, Tendy, Dravid, Khan, Singh and Sehwag all step down, do they have the same level of quality to replace them? NOT IN A MILLION YEARS, therefore their results are likely to suffer dramatically, and that doesn't bold well considering they just got whitewashed the other day,

Australia aswell will soon lose Hussey, Ponting and Haddin, and they won't be easy to replace at all, the Pak team also has a bunch of oldies like Hafeez, Ul Haq, Khan, Cheema, Ajmal etc and the SL team are over the hill now and struggling badly, THAT'S JUST THE WAY THE GAME GOES, by bringing through our youngsters now we're getting a headstart on everyone else and it will bear fruit in the coming years imo,

Comparing us with NZ is pure nonsense, they've been heading for trouble for ages, the writing was on the wall when they got whitewashed in Bang and just recently they nearly lost a test to Zimbabwe, their batting is inconsistant and their bowling is weak, so it's no surprise they are losing badly in Australia, we on the other hand have fought toe to toe with India all through the tour despite them being at home and having much more experienced players, if we can push them now whats gonna happen when they don't have Dravid, Tendy and Laxman to save them? they won't stand a chance against us imo.

[mapoui]

the cycles theory is fine but it is not a flow that is put down and aplicable to all situations by rote.

in my estimation westindies legitimately went down twice..when the worrell/sobers team got old between 1968-73 when Kanhai took over..and from the RSA debacle under Lara to now.

these were legit declines in that administrative folly did not really play a decisive part in it.

administrative folly is responsible for not planning for decline so that it wud be as short as possible... contrarily maintining decline, stretching it out by rediculous administrative polices.

from 1928 to 1939...and again from 1948 to the appointment of Worrell in 1960, administrative folly made sure that the best westindies team never took to the field, made sure that the worst possible captains led the tean, ensuring disastrous results, and maximum internal dysfunction.

yet in all periods westindies maitained a flow of class players that is unparralled in the sport, suggesting that if leadership at all levels was competent there may have been no declines at all up to 1999... 1951-52, 1957, and 1968-73 wud have been little burps...not anything that could be called declines

from 1999 to the current day is the absolute first period in the history of the westindian game the region has failed to produce great players all along the way. for the first time in its history westindies were not producing the like of Richards and Roberts, Bishops and Benjamins, Laras etc.

that is what has made this period so hard to bear..becuase the cupboard truly became bare for the very first time.

only now we see lights in this tunnel with the emergence of lil Bravo, Barath as potentially great batsmen..Edwards as the traditional rock of the order like Nurse, Gomes, Butcher, Richardson, haynes..who set the stage for the Kanhais and Sobers, the Vivs and laras to excel.

and in the bowling such as Rampaul, Roach, Edwards-fidel...good hard fast bowlers, a notch below great... who are holding the line until better arrives.

also we have finally, the makings of real spin bowlers in Bishoo and Narine. and maybe a dedcent captain in ramdin if he continues his good form with the bat and is selected as leader.

with the implosion of baugh there shud be no difficulty in selecting ramdin once again in the side.

so we must be careful with the decline label relative to the westindies. there must be the conditioners or caveats, for westindies only arrived at the consisitent Kiwi-like condition and stage, this last rounds here... from 1999, in which there were no class players to fall back on.

never before had we been there..and hopefully never again....if the wicb does its job of maintaining and developing westindies cricket

[mikesiva]

It's not nonsensical to compare us to NZ at all...I would argue that it's far more appropriate to compare ourselves to NZ than to Australia or Pakistan. The whole point of this thread is to dismiss the whole argument of cycles as a fait accompli. It's only cyclical if there's light at the end of the tunnel. In the cases of Australia and Pakistan, the light looms large at the end of the tunnel, while in our case, in the case of NZ, it's a very faint glow....

We talk about potentially great players among our youngsters, but the only player I agree holds that title is Lil Bravo. I don't think Barath and Kirk will be anything more than hard, average campaigners at best, who try to make the best of limited talent. I see the future batting as it has been in the recent past - a mediocre lineup built around one really good batsman ((Lara, Shiv), and as we know from past experience, that's not enough to propel us back into the big-time any time soon....

As for the bowling, it's clear we don't have a world-top-five bowler right now, as this current crop is good enough to be competing in Tests, but none of them look like the reincarnation of AMbrose, Walsh or Gibbs. Have we asked ourselves why the cupboard is suddenly so bare? Back in the gold old days, bowling in cricket was the only way for tall athletes to make their way in the world, but now they have so many other opportunities. For example, Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake grew up playing cricket at a time when the West Indies cricketers were still achieving more on the world stage than Jamaican athletes, so naturally they chose fast-bowling over athletics first. It was their school coaches who rightly steered them away from cricket to athletics. Nowadays, I'm willing to bet that potential athletes in school are choosing athletics over cricket....

HOlding made a very valid point about how interest in cricket has fallen regionally, and it reflects my personal experience, too. Back in the good old days, at your school you had various levels of grade cricket, inter-house cricket, inter-class cricket. But now, even in traditional cricket playing schools, they struggle to get XI players together to field a team. So, the interest from potentially talented players has declined significantly. If so few kids are playing cricket at school level, how are we going to get back where we once were?

I'm all for being optimistic, but I believe it has to be based on sometning tangible...and at the moment, I think a comparison with NZ is more apt than we're prepared to admit.

[mapoui]

good argument mike but westindies are still not New Zealand. the traditions are not the same, the archieves tell a different story and the reality on the ground are disimilar.

you list a ton of disadvantages westindies cricket faces at this stage. these are more than what the Kiwis face. only rugby challengers them...a lot more challenge us. they have always had money..certainly a lot more than we.

and for the longest while westindies cricket was stymied by class so that only schoolboys from the best scholsl had a chance, limiting flows contracting them to even less than 6 million in the past could produce.

it is only now that the westindian population is about 6 millions. in the past it was much less

that is one reason why ordinary youngsters flocked to athletics and soccer..because there were no class/racial barriersl that really mattered in those activities.

even back in the day, when, if Maple, Shamrock and Sporting Club in Titty represented the social classes in soccer, there were clubs made up of ordinary citizens that also excelled in soccer.

ordinary people could not be kept out of football/soccer. the administration of soccer in Titty for example, built by the brother of CLR James, made sure of that.

the globlal ambient of soccer also contributed. soccer only needed one ball for games..not a whole array of expensive equipment that ordinary people could not afford. they cud trump up to buy a cheap ball and play barefoot if necessary, which was almost always the case.

and universities were always incentivised to train people for athletic excellence. the more they produced, ultimately from anywhere in the world, the better it became for them financially. so they scoured the world for athletic talent, especially Africa and the westindies.

westindians cud also go to england as colonials if they excelled at anything at all..as french westindians cud go to Paris, Dutch colonials to holland etc, the Portuguese colonials to Portugal.

but athletics was a very restrictive activity financilly until recent years..as for individual rewards that is. there was the class thing that made receiving money for performance illegal, consequent upon losing status and becoming a pariah if one took money.

so yes money, reward is the thing currently, increasingly so for the past 30-40 years to now, when there is little remaining restriction upon what all sportsmen and women can make.

but in the process we see a lot of the difficulties cricket must overcome to gain its share of athletic talent if it is re-emerge as a westindian powerhouse of athletic activity.

the wicb must neutralise the cost of equipment for schools in particular. that ought not to be a problem working with government and sponsors. grounds must also be prepared for cricket which also shud not be a problem, if it is incoprporated into public parks, which are sadly lacking in the westindies.

there is a street in a town Called Waterdown near where I live that is a wonder to behold.

waterdown is part of an economically burgeroing region west of Toronto, in Ontario that includes Burlington, one of the richest comunities anywhere in the world,the town of Milton, and northwest Mississauga.

on the main street of Waterdown as you get out of the business district, lies a strecth of playing fields that is incredible..playing fields, hockey rinks, enclosed, comunity centres and sundry sports facilties that make yu stop to catch your breath.

on a summer afternoon, evening... for the sun goes down at 9'oclock at night... on all those fields the activities can be incredible. they are all filled with kids doing something, girls and boys, witrh adults, men and women..organised and unorganised.

and the facilties are not shukular...they are modern and up to date. there are soccer fields, baseball diamonds, tennis courts..incrdible I tell you.

and there are similar facilities in every town I know of in the huge region in which I live for I am always all over the place, learning it, seeing what gives.

I never saw anything of the kind in the westindies. and I have been all over most of the westindies too.

the closest that comes to what I see here as a matter of routine, was the Queens Park Savannah in Trinidad. and I dont know what shape that is currently in

what is routine in canada is scarce in the westindies. and if cricket is to be solved, sports and social problems generally, the people must have places to play in the westindies.

this is a deadly lack in the westindies and if the governmenrts are serious about social development they must begin to provide adequately for the people. and in doing so park facilities in which provison is made for all sporting activities are crucial

it is the governments responsibility to designate playing areas and to provide and prepare the facilities, and maintain them in good shape.

in and among what must be provided wud be cricket pitches as well as equipment for kids to use in playing the game....free equipment... managed by the park authorities that kids can access at all time.

thats what I mean when I speak of the government, the wicb and sponsorship..a trio of administration.. working in concert to produce the best results for the game. the cost of equipment and facilities are often prohibitive..they must be provided abundantly and free of charge. and that can be easily accomplished

it wud be the responsibility of the the wicb and sponsorship to keep the game in the publics mind in ways that keep the nation/region interested. cricket has been a pillar of westindian social evoluton so it shud not be a marketing problem for the wicb to keep cricket as a focal point of westindian social interest.

but the key to all this is reward at the top end. the rewards for athletic talent must be attractive enuff to keep up the flow into the game. this is what the cricket authorities must always keep in equal or superior line with the competition cricket has for athletic talent in the westindies

[mapoui]

I disagree with yu on barath Mike!

Barath scored a very good ton on debut against a decent Oz side. that is talent! the boy has talent.

his fitness has gone south and has affected his development negatively. on his return and in between it was easy to spy soem faults in his batting. it was easier to spy some mental faults.

barath appears to have become a lil over-rconfident, losing the attitude that brought him to the dance.

well he has to regain that attitude..one of patience, care, determination, awareness that made him look to understand what he had to deal with everytime he went to bat that resulted in lots of runs.

barath has a strong regional average, quite a few tons under his belt. average players do not do what he has achieved so far.

wat is essentrial for anyone at all doing anything at all is twhen things begin to go bad, a return to basics is needed, indeed is essential.

that is what is required of mr Barath at this stage. if in his highness he now realizes that he must step down and go back to basics he will only benefit, become humble again and score a lot of runs up at the top

[AFRO]

It's not nonsensical to compare us to NZ at all...I would argue that it's far more appropriate to compare ourselves to NZ than to Australia or Pakistan. The whole point of this thread is to dismiss the whole argument of cycles as a fait accompli. It's only cyclical if there's light at the end of the tunnel. In the cases of Australia and Pakistan, the light looms large at the end of the tunnel, while in our case, in the case of NZ, it's a very faint glow....

RUBBISH, Pakstan haven't beaten any of India, SA, England or Australia SINCE 2005, out of us, Pak, SL and NZ we are the last to actually beat a top four side in a Test series (England 2009) , furthermore like i mentioned above the Pakistan team are getting old, Hafeez 31, Umar 30, Younis Khan 34, Ul Haq 37, Rehman 31, Ajmal 34 and Cheema 32, WHERE IS THEIR YOUNG PROSPECTS? Akmal is getting dropped for fun and Junaid Khan is injury pron, since the great Ammir they haven't produced any world class talent at all and it will catch up with them in a few years,

And as for OZ, their young batters Hughes and Khawaja look very average and the media are already calling for them to be dropped, Ponting, Hussey and Haddin are all abouv 34 aswell so they are gonna have some issues to deal with very soon, their pacers look alright but they've only played on bowling paradises thus far, the test will come when they have to get wickets on an indian road.

We talk about potentially great players among our youngsters, but the only player I agree holds that title is Lil Bravo. I don't think Barath and Kirk will be anything more than hard, average campaigners at best, who try to make the best of limited talent. I see the future batting as it has been in the recent past - a mediocre lineup built around one really good batsman ((Lara, Shiv), and as we know from past experience, that's not enough to propel us back into the big-time any time soon....

Excuse me Barath ALREADY HAS TWO TONS TO HIS NAME and in more than half of the tests he's played he's got himself a 50 or more, is he still developing? sure, but to try and write him off as "average" at this early stage of his career is foolhardy imo, Kirk imo is a wonderful batter who can be our very own Jonathan Trott, a man who started late but is as reliable as they come, Kirk's stats thus far don't lie, and they are even more impressive considering they've come with having to play the number two side four times, then we have Powell who when he was in full flow in the last test looked every bit as talented as Bravo and has all the shots, lastly there's Brathwaite who can easily go on to earn a record similar to Chanders, so the cupboard is looking good as far as batters are concerned and no other nations has this amount of young batting potential in their hands,

As for the bowling, it's clear we don't have a world-top-five bowler right now, as this current crop is good enough to be competing in Tests, but none of them look like the reincarnation of AMbrose, Walsh or Gibbs. Have we asked ourselves why the cupboard is suddenly so bare?

The cupboard isn't as "bare" as you imply imo, in the spin department we've got two gems in Bishoo and Narine, and many of our bowling prospects ARE TALL, Holder 6'6 , Bess 6'5 , Carlos Brathwaite 6'4 etc, they just need to be given a chance, but the selectors have often liked to stick with the status quo as far as the bowlers are concerned, i hope that mindset changes asap,

I'm all for being optimistic, but I believe it has to be based on sometning tangible...and at the moment, I think a comparison with NZ is more apt than we're prepared to admit.

The FACT is in recent times they were whitewashed against Bang and lost at home to Pak, both things that didn't happen to us, we may not be the giants we once were but we're no "minnow" either, i firmly believe we're no worse than SL (who have lost three test series in a row and will probably lose their next one aswell against SA) and Pak, who have only beaten SL and NZ lately and couldn't beat us in the Caribbean.

[mikesiva]

With regards to the decline of cricket at grass-roots level, maps, Bucknor also correctly raises concerns as well, and he also doesn't see us moving out of the WI-NZ seven-vs-eight sphere any time soon....

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Barath only has one Test century, Afro, and he's still hasn't fulfilled his early promise. As for Brathwaite, he hasn't even got out of the blocks yet either, and I'm not convinced that either will be 'great' batsmen. Lil Bravo is another story....

Pakistan are at a different level from us, Afro, as you can see from their current demolition of Bangladesh on their home soil, just a few weeks after we proudly beat our chest on our unconvincing successes at the same venues. Pakistan are showing us how to beat Bangladesh in Bangladesh.

Australia are inconsistent. They tied a Test series in South Africa (damn good!), and then were held to a draw in a home Test series against the Kiwis (even the lowly Kiwis have won a Test against the Aussies). But Australia are rebuilding, and they won't be in our sights for long. They will soon leave us behind....

This March will be our best opportunity to win a Test against the Aussies, but will we? Or have we, as Pollard said the other day, forgotten how to win? If we don't win a Test against Australia, then we are a notch below New Zealand....

[mapoui]

With regards to the decline of cricket at grass-roots level, maps, Bucknor also correctly raises concerns as well, and he also doesn't see us moving out of the WI-NZ seven-vs-eight sphere any time soon....

well as yu may see from my posts on Bucknor, I have always had a fair idea of the westindian situation.

which is why I purposely pointed out that all the Kiwis have to battle with is Rugby. they may a few more related issues but yu get my point.

we in the westindies have a hell of a lot more that damages us routinly in that must change before we can march to greatness in anything again, including cricket.

which is way I established as my flag when I started posting on sissy.com many years ago this fact: WESTINDIES WILL NOT REGAIN CRICKET VIABILITY UNTIL WE DEVELOP SOCIAL VIABILITY BY REVOLUTIONISING WESTINDIES SOCIETY

nothing in the westindies works in favour of producing viable citIzens. VIABLE CITIZENS PLAY LIKE WE USED TO. unviable citizens play like we play currently.

it is a testament and natural emotional and physical strength , to the natural abilities of the westindian people, we are not yet washed away given the regime we currently live under.

in cricket we still play like we can, like we know the game and wat we are doing despite wicb suicidal policies

the Kiwis have a viable home, a real nation, even if it is capitalist. we do not!


as far as Barath and Braffit are concerned let me tell you wat I mean by great batsmen...
Lara, Viv, the W's, lloyd, Headley, Kanhai!

then we have had Butcher, Nurse, Stollmeyer, Richardson, Gomes etc...batsmen just below great who provide the base on which the greats wrote/write their stories.

if barath does not fall into the first category by the time he is done, he will be at least in the second.

that is fine by me... and like Braffit who may do the same, both in combination with Edwards will be the platform that lil bravo will write his own record.

i dont have to split hairs on where lil barath and Braffit will fall. all things considered they are good and will do good things for the westindies.

the problem is not with them..it is with the wicb and its continuing mode of anti-westindianism that has resulted in the Sammy captaincy among a whole lot of intentionally destructive policies from factory road.

the best chance for this team for instance is to provide it with a good leader..a better leader than Sammy.

the only player who has given any indication he can provide a better quality of leadership is Ramdin.

we all have questions about Ramdins batting, not his keeping. now that Baugh has imploded, exposing for the world to see his stupidity and mental deficiencies....to which I constantly alluded to in the past... we may have to live with Ramdin as keeper, reconciling ourselves to his low batting average.

but if we select him again his ability as leader now adds to his appeal and neutralises his lack of high batting average to some extent. he would then be valuable for his leaderhsip and keeping...and 2 out of 3 aint so bad

the team has demonstrated they would have more confidence in Ramdin as leader than Sammy. that too is an advantage.

so the best decision the wicb cud make at this time would be to select Ramdin as captain.

team play is likely to improve. I doubt that it would take westindies all the way however. nothing can, save social change in the westindies itself..the nature of which I have already described.

but doing our best wud see Ramdin appointed and this team on its way to the best it can be.

but will the wicb do it?

we are watching and all I have said about Ramdin being appointed is quite self-evident..not rocket science. but will the wicb do it.?

lets watch and see

we will prolly get a continuation of Sammy, promotion of Devon Thomas to the senior team and at best, Ramdin as ODI cappo.

but lets watch!