(posted 7052 days ago)International Herald Tribune
Cricket: Hope is reborn for a team long accustomed to losing
Huw Richards
Wednesday, December 29, 2004There may, perhaps have been more joyous sporting locations this year - Boston in late October, maybe - than London's Kennington Oval cricket ground on the evening of Saturday, Sept. 25, but it is hard to believe it.
The West Indies, the formerly British-ruled islands of the Caribbean, have made an incomparable contribution to cricket. They have produced remarkable players, great teams - until recently the West Indies team had the highest all-time winning percentage of any national squad - and above all a sense of joy and festivity. Those players and teams were an unparalleled source of pride and identification for people afflicted by poverty at home and racism when they moved abroad.
Little pleasure, though, has been taken from the past decade as West Indies has dropped from the top of test cricket to near the bottom, saved from backmarker status only by the inadequacies of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. The general expectation was that, after losing seven of eight matches in home-and-away series of five-day tests, West Indies would lose to the host, England - fresh from victory over the world champion Australia - in the final of the one-day Champions Trophy.
It looked even more that way when the last specialist batsman, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, was dismissed with West Indies 71 runs behind, leaving two Barbadians, the wicket-keeper Courtney Browne and fast bowler Ian Bradshaw, at the wicket with only another specialist bowler to come.
Their initial resistance seemed merely a postponement of the inevitable, as they accumulated runs in ones and twos.
Gradually, though, momentum grew, and hope was reborn - hope, though, that could have been dashed by a single false stroke or good delivery amid gathering darkness. Tension ratcheted inexorably, but Bradshaw and Browne, in their 30s yet novices at this level, seemed immune as they stroked their way to a victory greeted by a baseball-style pileup of purple-clad West Indian players in front of the Oval's venerable pavilion.
No setting could have been more fitting than the Oval, with its proximity to areas of London heavily settled by the early migrants of the postwar years making it the ground most associated with West Indian success and celebration.
West Indies had won against the odds often enough before. Against stereotype, their players have often excelled in adversity, assumptions that their play is based on spontaneous natural talent overlooking the technical excellence and tough-mindedness associated with their game at its best.
Bradshaw and Browne displayed both qualities, but in a context different from those of their predecessors who had fashioned improbable victories. Those wins were against a background of strength, produced by players with the self-confidence of habitual winners. This team had become accustomed to losing.
This result won't reverse the cultural, political and economic handicaps against which West Indian cricketers must battle.
It won't add a cent to a combined national product that is around 6 percent of Australia's. It has been argued that it might even be bad for West Indian cricket, an unexpected victory providing ammunition for those who would argue that nothing much is wrong with it, when plenty is.
Maybe so, but against that is the renewed pride and confidence that can come from a performance like this. This was a reassertion of cricket as a source of joy.
And even though England has still to win a serious one-day trophy, few home supporters grudged the purple-clad pileup and its exultant fans - not as many as would once have attended an Oval test, but still audibly ecstatic amid the gloom - one iota of it.