Outsiders hope for a miracle

Throughout the 1980s and early 90s the world’s batsmen cowered behind their helmet grilles and chest protectors in the face of a hail of bouncers. It was more like a duckshoot than sport.

When the World Cup begins later this month, however, few will fear the West Indies.

Winners in 1975 and 1979 and losing finalists in 1983, they will start as outsiders for the first time in the event’s history.

Their captain, Brian Lara, will doubtless talk a defiant game, just as he did after his side managed to hold the powerful Australians in home Test and one-day series in April.

"The team should be proud of their performances," he had said then. "We canlook forward to regaining our position at the top."

What he omitted to mention was that those Test `team performances’ had relied heavily on two remarkable individual innings, of 213 and 153 not out, by Lara himself.

His brilliance – following a two-year personal trough – merely papered over the team’s gaping deficiencies which had been so ruthlessly exposed during a historic 5-0 Test series defeat in South Africa at the turn of the year.

The West Indies, never before on the wrong end of a whitewash, then lost the one-day series 6-1 to the South Africans.

Lara, significantly, had been more candid then. Kids from Jamaica and Barbados preferred basketball to cricket now, he ruefully admitted, adding: "West Indies cricket has been in decline for a number of years – and it is going to take a long time to put it right."

Worse still, the West Indies are clearly an unhappy and disunited team. Carl Hooper’s decision to walk out on the team three weeks before the start of the tournament is as mysterious asit is unsettling.

Several other senior players – let alone selectors – do not see eye to eye with the captain, who was sacked before the South African tour during a pay row, reinstated, then almost sacked again before saving his skin with that double century in Kingston.

Lack of collective spirit has translated itself into lack of collective form. Established players like Shivnarine Chanderpaul are struggling, while ageing strike bowlers, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, look ever more injury prone as they head for their armchair and slippers.

It is tempting to write a Caribbean World Cup obituary before a ball has been bowled. Just as it was tempting to do so in 1996. The team had gone into that World Cup still in mental turmoil following its Test series defeat to Australia, its first such setback since 1979. An increasingly rebellious Lara, meanwhile, was conducting a public war against his captain Richie Richardson, who was so out of touch he could barely hit the ball off the square.

It seemed asif things could not get any worse. They lost to debutants Kenya. Yet in the following weeks, against all expectations, the West Indies somehow beat South Africa, the favourites, in the quarters thanks to a Lara century, then missed out on the final by just five runs against Australia. Sounds very familiar!