Former England captain says West Indies lack great players
Saturday, April 10, 2004
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts: Former England
cricket captain, David Gower described the current English Cricket Tour to the
Caribbean as “one-sided” and said the shortage of great players on the West
Indies team is the reason for their current misfortunes.
Gower was speaking during an exclusive interview with Erasmus Williams, Press
Secretary to the St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister, in the VIP Lounge of the
Robert L. Bradshaw International Airport shortly after he and his family
arrived Wednesday from Barbados to join 200 rich and famous British nationals
on board the luxurious liner Silver Wind. Passengers on the ship are cruising
the region watching the current cricket test matches between the West Indies
and England. “For those of us who used to
play in the mid-80’s, it is a welcome relief. It’s like a payback. It is about
time we won. That’s the way we like to think in the UK and at the same time we
sympathise with the West Indies now, because I know exactly how they feel. As
a captain, whose side has lost 5-0, in 1986, it is a very un-enjoyable
experience. It is a traumatic experience,” said Gower, who along with Michael
Holding, who is on the ship, is working for SkySports Television covering the
series. He said there are obviously good
players in the Caribbean at the moment, but “even good players suffer from it
(defeat) and we have to remember that we have to then get over it and start
again and the next series you try and win that. Once you start to recover
things start to change in your favour.” “For
the Antigua game, I’ve got a feeling that England might just win again, only
because I know how dispiriting it is when you have lost three – nil,” said
Gower, adding that if Laura and some of the younger West Indies players hit
form, it could be different. “I think it is
going to be a less lively pitch in Antigua from what I hear. Can’t talk from
this distance, but the pitches so far have been lively and have favoured our
big, tall fast bowlers and it looks like England will be reversing the
photograph of the 1986 Test Series, when we came here and got battered by a
Michael Holding, and Michael Marshall,” said Gower.
He said the pitches at Sabina Park (Jamaica), Queen’s Park Oval (Trinidad) and
Kensington Oval (Barbados) have favoured the English bowlers and if it is
better for batting and “we see more runs, we might see a draw.”
Ask what he sees as the reasons for the misfortunes of the West Indies Cricket
squad, Gower said the simplest answer is that West Indies are just short of
great players. “Laura is a great player and
the others would probably be aspiring to be players, but they are not there
yet. There are good players around, but what you need is ability, you need the
confidence to go with that, you need to work out how to use the ability and I
think that West Indies as a whole, has just lost players like Walsh and
Ambrose – some of the great players of more recent times and they have not
been replaced yet. So it takes a little while for people to learn.”
“It takes good guidance. I do not know whether the guidance around West Indies
team is as good as it gets yet, because when you have younger inexperienced
players, you need to look at them differently to the sort of players that we
saw in the mid-80’s, who were good players, great players who knew what to do
and they were well led by someone like Clive Lloyd then Viv Richards and Viv
is finding it very different to be chairman of the selectors to being captain
of a great team. It is a lot easier to be captain of a great team than it is
to be captain or a selector of a side that is a little bit short on talent,”
said Gower.
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