By BRYAN DAVIS
IN A recent article by Jonathan Ramnanansingh, Phil Simmons has explained the limitations of the West Indian white-ball cricket team, hence, a skills camp underway at Coolidge Cricket Ground in Antigua.
I’m quite surprised that at international level, players don’t have the skills to partake in a limited-overs game. According to the article Simmons believes this camp plays an instrumental role in guiding his players to becoming more all-around and consistent batsmen at the T20 and One-Day International levels.
As far as I could envisage, the batsmen have the skills to bat; what they lack, however, is the Cricket Intelligence (CI) to play an innings. Every innings a batsman — by this I mean anyone going in to bat for a team, whether at one or 11 in the batting order — has to determine what is required. Every innings is distinct according to the flow and situation of the game.
Skill is the ability to bat, to perform as a batsman. However, a batsman could be orthodox and look like a matchwinner in the nets, but might be quite useless in a game. This is what I’m getting at, regardless of how long one spends in a camp, it would not give him the ability to bat successfully in a match.
Nevertheless, to conquer this fault, he has to be able to THINK of the game and the position as it stands. Therefore, he needs to know what risks he can take and when. He must be aware of and differentiate between the bowler who is on his length and line today and the one that is not. He has in his mind precisely where the field is set, instinctively working out the sharp top-class fielder from the fumbler.
This thinking and batting to suit the occasion, we saw in the application of Joshua Da Silva in the main and the support of Alzarri Joseph, Kemar Roach and Jayden Seales, in the third Test match against England in the recently concluded series, in Grenada. These lads proved the use of CI in a cricket game regardless of format!
The coach says: “I think that we are getting to the stage where, between overs 7 to 15 in T20s and overs 11 to 35 in ODIs, where we have been stalled, and that’s why we’re losing so many wickets. We’re trying to make sure we’re not stalled anymore and our scoring-ball percentage goes up, from 60%, or wherever it is, to 70%.”
All the same, cricket is not a science, it’s an art. It’s easy to sit back and report from a mathematical point of view just how many runs should be scored and at what juncture. Yet, an innings cannot be determined in that manner. Various factors can disrupt these theories. Batting ability, the opposing bowlers’ strengths and weaknesses, the type of pitch and the way it’s playing, dropped catches, players’ confidence. These factors are not covered scientifically. If it were, the game would soon become a colossal drag.
I agree with Simmons when he says that he wants to improve the skills of his batsmen. Nonetheless, that would be of no use without the introduction of the art of batsmanship. The batsman must k
