BY BRAYN DAVIS
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WHAT makes a cricket team perform poorly? The main reason is that they discharged the functions of their responsibilities worse than their opponents. And why did they not produce better? That is where the secret of playing sport lies. What is the secret? Understanding the game and its art and using one’s love for the sport and one’s ability to be the best one can be. Some will love cricket more than others and players will decide early in their lifetimes whether they want to pursue their future in cricket by aiming for international status, winning kudos for brilliance or they may rather not sacrifice the time or effort as their ambition lies elsewhere.
When Brian Lara was fourteen, I was the cricket coach at Fatima College. During a practice session one afternoon in early 1984 he asked me, “how come the world’s highest individual Test score of 365 not out held by Sir Garfield Sobers and scored since 1958, still stands? Why hasn’t anyone broken that record yet?”
I explained to the youngster that conditions of the game and the state of the pitch have to be present for a batsman to have the time, plus he will need the ambition and the ability to bat all those hours. He said to me with a shy smile, “I’ll beat that record”. I replied that it was a nice ambition to have and good luck, with a smile on my face. Even at that age, his talent shone through and I had already tagged him to play Test cricket. But to score more than 365 in a single innings? Not likely, I thought.
However, the boy grew up to manhood with great ambition to be the best batsman in the world, practised long excruciating hours and achieved a goal he had set since he was fourteen. And went on to be the best batsman in the world between 1994 and 2004. We all know his record scores.
All batsmen would not be blessed with the same natural ability, although some may, but they would not possess similar ambition.
Nevertheless, those who will succeed at international cricket need to develop their concentration through long hours of practise, with repetition of the proper technique of defence and attack.
This brings me to the pathetic display by the majority of batsmen on the WI team in the first Test against Sri Lanka at Galle from November 21 to 25. WI lost by187 runs.
The technique of batsmen who have experience and should know better, through either a lack of willpower, ambition or just pure laziness, seemed to have no idea how to bat on a pitch helps the spinner but was by no means unplayable.
The first innings was bad, except for captain Kraigg Brathwaite’s 46; also 45 by Kyle Mayers, the left-hander showing none of the promise that he displayed earlier in the year in Bangladesh and Jason Holder’s 36. Shockingly, the start of the second innings was a disaster until at six wickets for 18, the 23-year-old Joshua Da Silva, (54), applying knowledge of the situation with a solid defence for survival, joined the main batsman Nkrumah Bonner (68 n.o.),
