Pass Out and Fight for Innings

25, Jan 1999
'A lot of the success of Lloyd's and Richards' team had to do...with the harnessing of natural aggression and hostility that brought with it a certain mental toughness.'

'The team reflects us. It is not merely the team that must get its act together. It is we the population of these islands that must get our heads clear...'

The Afrikaner is not ordinary white folk. They are quite different. It took a 50 whitewashing on the cricket fields of South Africa for us West Indians to come to this realisation.

James Gregory, a jailer on Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned under the apartheid regime, became eventually to be a friend of Mandela and has recently written a book called Goodbye Bafana in which he describes the attitude of the White Afrikaner to sport:

"In sport we played harder because it was demanded that we prepare ourselves for battles ahead. It was important we were tougher and faster than anyone. When we were ostracised from the world, cut off, we were told it was because the rest of the sporting world was afraid to play us. We were too good...

"The indoctrination also took place in subtle forms. By this age I was turning into a good 100-yard sprinter. But the school coaches would rile me by telling me that a kaffir could out-sprint me. 'Come, Gregory, would you want to be beaten by a blerrtie kaffir?"

The sports master knew how to get me going faster. "Without knowing it, my life had been moulded, unmoulded and remoulded. It was a chipping, chipping, chipping process which eventually led me to being as bad as the rest of them..."

To a white Afrikaner there is little difference between "war" and sport," especially when the opponent is a "kaffir," his terminology for black and inferior people. Looking at the South African cricket team function on the field of play in the just-concluded test series, one got a good lesson in what is meant by cultured aggression.

On the contrary, there has been a tendency in the West Indies to restrain and curb natural aggression and hostility whenever this appeared; the old Alexander/Gilchrist syndrome about which our generation only heard.

A lot of the success of Lloyd's and Richards' team had to do not only with proper technique, professionalism and fitness but more so with the harnessing of natural aggression and hostility that brought with it a certain mental toughness.

After Tony Greig made his now infamous statement about the "grovelling" of West Indian players as if to suggest this to be some genealogical flaw, Lloyd and company were to make certain that all Greig's innings thereafter were short-lived.

Whenever he came to the wicket, Lloyd gave Holdings the ball, and fast pitch, slow pitch, dead pitch, it mattered not. Holding would bowl lightning fast deliveries that ripped the heart out of Greig's defence.

How can we forget these crucial high points of our cricket history? Did such occasions mean nothing to us and to our collective social consciousness? When Jeff "Thommo" Thompson first came to the West Indies as the reputed fastest in the world, bowling consistently, it was said, at between 98 - 100 mph, Richards held on the him at Kensington, Barbados, knowing full well that it was do or die for the West Indian team.

At tea, that day, team managers had to cut the gloves off Richards' swollen busted-up, bloodied fingers. Tony Becca, the Jamaican sportswriter, of course could never see the connection between such tremendous courage and Viv's gum-chewing, swaggering walk to the wicket wearing the red, ice-green and gold wrist-band, projecting thereby Garvey's symbolic colours of Pan-African liberation.

This game called cricket is not child's play. It was never meant to be a game for the faint-hearted.

One can recall Colin Croft bowling to the Australians, 16 consecutive overs from the northern end of the Queen's Park Oval. The last ball of the 16th over was as hostile and "snorting" as was the first ball of the first over.

Lloyd was to claim later in his discussions that what he liked most of all about Croft was the fact that he did not allow "tails to wag."

Consistently in the just- concluded series, South African tailenders mounted serious rear guard actions, showing up the incompetence of our second-line string of bowlers. None of them seemed technically able to bowl the "old ball" as Croft and Walsh of yesteryear.

Walsh's greatness is obviously underlined by the fact that today he has become just as good with the new ball. On the other hand, all the South African fast bowlers and seamers knew what to do and tended to do a little jump backwards on one foot, while swiping across the line at any ball pitched right up between leg and centre and rising waist height.

In the '94 season Lara got away a lot with this bit of flawed stroke play because he was more physically fit and he was obviously picking up the trajectory much earlier. Not so today. McGarth exploited this and so too have the South Africans.

Close examination of all the "outs" Lara got in the recent test series, and they have been quite peculiar, will surely tell the story to any keen cricket observer, coach or administrator. If this flaw continues, then it shall certainly tell us what manner of men we are and we shall never, ever, beat the pugnacious "Afrikaners".

The point that has been made is that first and foremost the consciousness of who and what you are informs the nature of the cricket that you will play; that natural aggression has to be harnessed and channelled effectively to bring that required mental toughness that must accompany fitness and professional technique in order to guarantee consistent success.

We have maintained all along that the West Indian cricket administrators have never understood this. When the Murray-Lloyd-Richards period was over, (incidentally, Murray is symbolic here of players' association militancy), the Board seemed bent on killing the aggressiveness that prevailed.

Haynes coming down the wicket to point his bat threateningly at Lawson (?) caused him to lose the captaincy after Richards departed and provided the Board with the rationale it needed to justify its desire and mandate for a moderate, lovable, non-threatening, non-confrontational captain like Richie Richardson.

There was little wrong with Richardson except his lack of aggression. He could be no match for the likes of the Australians, far less the South Africans today. That, in our view, and we have said it elsewhere, signalled the beginning of the present demise. Imagine having to concentrate on batting when some Australian wicket keeper proceeds with what they call "sledging."

Statements are made such as, "Away with you, you stinking nigger," the idea being to unsettle you, the batsman, and psychologically deter you from the task at hand.

One needs a mind of steel to withstand such provocation and continue picking up line and length of the bowling attack. Lara, not yet the captain, had on one occasion to leave the other end of the wicket to come down in defence of Samuels who was being given the treatment. To our surprise, Lara was criticised by West Indians for doing that.

So, when you juxtapose this with the fact, as stated by Ian Chappell, that West Indian batsmen on coming to the wicket were known to offer salutations like "good morning" and such the like to all the fielders around the stumps, you come to realise that we are probably in another world. Nice people seldom win. Like Richardson.

Our administrators have sought to get rid of all the players with aggressive streaks who have been described as "difficult." Winston Benjamin and Winton Davis are two fast bowlers who, it was claimed, had "discipline" problems. Today we are hearing similar remarks about Leon Garrick, the promising opening bat from Jamaica.

In our view, discipline can only be self-imposed, and it comes when people engaged in a mutually beneficial mission and the strategies and tactics are collectively worked out.

We lost that in the Richardson period. Lara has the temperament to rebuild that, he has the approach necessary to harness "difficult" players, but he is constantly being sent confusing signals from the West Indian population and the cricket administrators.

We need to tell him in no uncertain terms what we desire of him and provide him with the space to do it. If we want a "papsy-wapsy" captain, he cannot be that, and we should remove him immediately.

If we want a captain of steel who will whip the team into a fighting unit, then we must say so and provide him with the room and the tools to accomplish that. Our present duplicity and uncertainty about what is required has both captain and players confused and perplexed. The team reflects us. It is not merely the team that must get its act together. It is we the population of these islands that must get our heads clear and our act together.

Many of the pundits have recommended a cricket academy in which all the available modern technology is utilised. It is touted as the institution that will guarantee technically competent players in the future. We say yes to all that. The infrastructure must be built up throughout the region.

We were on top of the world for nearly two decades and all the other countries studied us and used our talents as expertise to coach and develop their game. Sobers and Kanhai made Sri Lanka, Greenidge made Bangladesh, while other West Indians served Zimbabwe and so forth.

So the expertise exists for the administrating of the formalised academy, of that we can rest assured. However, we must not forget to incorporate into the academy the great indulgences that made us. We played the cricket game of pass out and fight fuh inning at every available moment.

No other form of the game can get a batsman to move his feet as "pass out," and no other form can make a bowler do more tricks with ball and sharpen the reflexes of fielders as "fight fuh innings."

Take our professionals back there, make them fight fuh dey innings and fight fuh dey place on the team.