West Indies - What has happened to the West Indies cricket?

What has happened to the West Indies cricket?

Well it's Saturday morning and again England are continuing to pile on the runs.Being a cricket fan since the mid 70s,when West Indies were the best side ever,it got me thinking again, why are they in such sharp decline? One time they had a whole conveyor belt of wonderful fast bowlers and there was a time when just Barbados alone would have beaten England.Now their bowling is as lethal as park cricket.So what do you think is the reason(s) for their decline from top dogs to one of the worst test playing sides?

Public Comments

Well like you said, their uncanny ability to once be able to produce top class pace bowlers has disappeared. They also falter with the bat. When their great bowlers retired, they didn't make too much of an effort to find the next great bowler. They just thought they could pick anyone and they would do a job. However, with the batsman always seeming to fail, they put a lot of pressure on the bowlers, plus the spin of Gayle and occasionally Sarwan is not the most dangerous for batsmen. People are no longer frightened of the Windies attack. Their decline is a sad sight for cricket.
The American way of life has brought the demise of West Indies cricket.I was in Barbados some years ago and the youngsters were more interested in baseball and basketball than cricket
The number of sport have increased. Other country start spending more money training up coming players. Their the roamer that some have gone to America because they can make more money playing basketball Or some have gone to America for better education
Yes I think the popularity of American sports and soccer have to some extent superseeded Cricket which is a less glamourous and potentially less lucrative option. Islands with a large Indian population may have more potential for produce cricket stars in the future with a strong cultural connection there. The other thing is there seems to be less cohesiveness and co-operation between Caribbean nations as they are only interested in supporting their local heroes. Also of course other countries have been enjoying golden eras in the sport namely India and Australia. These thing go in phases. I think it is still possible to produce a team of Richards, Garners, Ambroses etc if the right incentives are in place for kids to play. A more earnest youth program, perhaps a specialist academy system and as I say greater co-operation between islands.
West Indies cricket team is presently in total disarray. They do not have a bowling attack which can bowl out a good opposition twice in a test match. They also lack good and consistent batsmen. They will have to do lot of work to rebuilt a team capable of competiting other strong teams in the world.
When you have a team that consists of many separate countries, as in the unique case of the West Indies cricket team, you will eventually run into problems. I refer specifically to team selection and managing. Each country will of course want their players in the team and then even the selection of a captain becomes a problem. Unity is much more difficult to achieve than in the case of one independent country. Different coaching techniques and policies will also be followed in each country. Many top players have left, including Ambrose, Welsh and now of course the great Brian Lara. I personally think that "too many cooks spoil the broth", there is a generation of cricketers that have left and it mostly comes down to the fact that the Windies is not an individual country.
nothing they are in re-building process. dont worry. they will kick ausie butt again.(as they did in past.) wait & see
they are playing shit but good for england.
The west Indian people really deserves better than what the west indies team is giving us at the moment we show our support to them all throughout their embarrassing defeats we just cannot take it anymore. the players are just playing for money and not country or pride. nalakafairly i really cant wait for that time to come am running out of patience.
well, today the got their butts kicked, pity its gonna rain for the next 3 days :((
i don't know what happened
they r on a downward slide
most of the problems started with the introdution of satelite tv in the west indies
i think the conveyor belt has come to an end and obviously in this match, they cannot rely on Sarwan and Chanderpaul, obviously there bowling is below par, maybe they should have a swing left armer like Pedro Collins in the squad and Fidel Edwards is missing due to injury, hes their fastest bowler. Overall it hink West Indies dont have the bowlers for swinging conditions such as Headingley because swing isnt prominent in the Caribbean. Also there are many spinners playing on the couny circuit and Dave Mohammad hasn't been included in the West Indies squad.
Money, the Americans have taken over the West Indies and greed is the word there now not sport.
West Indies' woeful slide in Test cricket It's a measure of just how far West Indian cricket has fallen that they start a tour of England as the overwhelming underdogs, with almost all experts agreeing that they have little expectations from Ramnaresh Sarwan's side. Twenty years back, anything less than a West Indian whitewash would have been a disappointment to their fans; today, they'll be delighted with a drawn series. Everyone agrees that the current West Indian lot aren't a patch on the greats that played in the 1980s; this week the Numbers Game looks at just how badly they've fallen away. In all West Indies have played have played 436 Tests, winning 149 and losing 138 (click here for an overall summary), which makes them one of four teams to have won more games than they have lost (Australia, England and Pakistan are the others). If they don't turn around their slump quickly, though, that difference of 11 could vanish in a trice. Almost a third of their total losses in Tests have come in this decade, a period in which they played only 82 Tests, which is only 19% of their total matches. In fact, in each decade from the 1950s to the 1990s, West Indies won more Tests than they lost (see table below). In the 2000s, they have lost three times as much as they have won. Another indication of their freefall is the alarming rate at which the gap between the wins and defeats is narrowing. As recently as June 1997, the difference between the number of matches won and lost was a healthy 49.after 333 Tests, they had won 129 and lost 80. By the end of their England tour, it might be down to a single-digit score. West Indies' Test record over the decades Decade Tests Wins Losses Draws/ Ties Win-loss ratio 1920s 3 0 3 0/ 0 0.00 1930s 19 4 9 6/ 0 0.44 1940s 9 3 6 0/ 0 - 1950s 48 18 17 13/ 0 1.05 1960s 49 18 13 17/ 1 1.38 1970s 63 18 15 30/ 0 1.20 1980s 82 43 8 31/ 0 5.37 1990s 81 30 28 23/ 0 1.07 2000s 82 15 45 22/ 0 0.33 The golden period for West Indian cricket was undoubtedly between 1980 and 1995, when they won three times as many Tests as they lost, a stat which has been neatly reversed in this decade. In that 16-year period, only twice did they lose more than two Tests in a year. Barely a sporting contest passes without someone making a cocky boast in the build-up. People are used to it - almost expect it - but in 1976 England captain Tony Greig overstepped the line on the eve of England's series against West Indies. He made a comment that galivanised not only the opposition but also the tens of thousands of their supporters who flocked to grounds to see his words rammed back down his throat. West Indies arrived in May 1976 after a humiliating 5-1 drubbing in Australia the previous winter. They had beaten India in between, but that had been a struggle, and Clive Lloyd, their captain, hatched a plan based on all-out pace. He possessed a crop of outstanding - and fast - bowlers, and in the early tour matches they destroyed everything put in front of them As the first Test loomed, Greig was interviewed for the BBC's Sportsnight programme. Irked by a stream of newspaper articles highlighting the strength of West Indies, Greig let rip. "I'm not really sure they're as good as everyone thinks," he said. "These guys, if they get on top they are magnificent cricketers. But if they're down, they grovel, and I intend, with the help of Closey [Brian Close] and a few others, to make them grovel." The remark was highly inflammatory for a number of reasons, the main one being that Greig's words, coming from a white South African, were seized on for racist overtones. "The word 'grovel' is one guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of any black man," Lloyd said. "The fact they were used by a white South African made it even worse. We were angry and West Indians everywhere were angry. We resolved to show him and everyone else that the days for grovelling were over." Most of the West Indies team felt Greig's words were deliberate and not an off-the-cuff quip. "Everyone was stunned," recalled Viv Richards, on his first tour of England. "This was the greatest motivating speech the England captain could have given to any West Indian team." Behind the scenes, the England players were equally livid. Pat Pocock, the Surrey spinner who played twice in the series, said his immediate reaction was: "You prat ...what have you done? You don't do that sort of thing, winding them up for no reason." Mike Brearley, who made his debut in the first Test, said that the words "carried an especially tasteless and derogatory overtone". While the British media initially treated the comments as pre-series bravado, it was soon clear that they had not gone down at all well with the Caribbean population. Greig apologised, even appearing on a black London radio station to try to diffuse the situation. "I'm a press-man's dream," he admitted, "if you talk to me long enough I will say something controversial. I am bound to offend someone and get myself into deep water. 'Grovel' was simply an instance of that." Close - aged 45 but recalled for the series - said that what irked some of the England side was not the remark, but that having made it Greig didn't back his words with actions. "Everyone knew what he meant," Close reflected. "If you get on top of West Indies the odds are that you stay on top. But the astonishing thing was that Tony, having made his point, made no attempt to drive it home once he got on the field." After draws at Trent Bridge and Lord's, West Indies took control of the series as England wilted in the heat - 1976 was one of the hottest and driest summers of the century - and were blown away by West Indies' battery of fast bowlers. At Old Trafford and Headingley, England lost heavily, and Greig was subjected to increasing barracking, mostly good-humoured, from the large Caribbean contingents in the crowds. At that time The Oval, the scene of the final Test, was more Kensington than Kennington for West Indies matches, with the large Caribbean population of south London making the game a virtual home-from-home for the tourists. To the accompaniment of bugles, horns, cans and calypso singing, the crowd partied as West Indies flayed England for two days. By the time Greig came out to bat on Saturday evening England had mounted a recovery, but after cracking two stinging cover-drives off Michael Holding, he was bowled off his pads. As he left the field several hundred spectators, mainly young and West Indian, ran onto to the pitch and headed for the departing Greig, jostling and mocking him, and play was suspended in what Wisden described as a "disgraceful scene". On the Monday, West Indies, who led on the first innings by 252 runs, did not enforce the follow-on, preferring to let Roy Fredericks and Gordon Greenidge cut loose in an unbeaten first-wicket stand of 182 in 32 overs. As the noise from the spectators increased in the afternoon heat, Greig slowly walked towards the open stands on the Harleyford Road side of the ground and sunk to his knees, grovelling to the crowd. They roared their delight. Greig, always the showman, had made his peace. "I realise that I made a mistake in using that word at the start of the series and they haven't let me forget it," he told the press that night. But it was too late for England, who were blown away by Holding the following morning, his 6 for 57 in the second innings giving him 14 wickets in the match. Within nine months Greig had thrown in his lot with Kerry Packer and had been stripped of the England captaincy - his international career ended at the end of the following summer. He went on to become a leading commentator, although he continued to court controversy. In 1990-91, while covering the England tour of the Caribbean, he was criticised for blurting out "Goodnight Charlie" when West Indian batsmen were dismissed. "Anyone who wants to suggest it was my South African background that was behind my comment and put any racist tone to this thing just doesn't know me," Greig said three decades later. "None of the West Indies players ever confronted me about my comments at the start of the series - they were just faster and nastier whenever I came to the crease."
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