1
While the West Indies was being beaten black and blue on the field by Australia with merciless ease, it was a couple of happenings off the field that were making news that were worthy of a splash around the globe — the cricketing globe, that is.
First, it was the absence of some key players from the squad who were busy delivering slightly more credible performance in Australia but not in West Indian outfit. It was the Big Bash League that had more attraction for some and there have been news of rifts between the players and administrators as well that is nothing but a characteristic of any house of cards that is getting ready for the inevitable fall.
While the debate was still consuming media space, Chris Gayle decided he had spent enough time out of international spotlight and grabbed it with both hands and a few other things — mouth, for instance — when, like a pathological attention-seeker, he aired certain remarks in a live on-the-sideline interview that were considered below the belt (pun not intended).
The West Indians were much better for much longer than anyone in the history of the game, but their fall from grace has been as spectacular as their rise once was
Regardless of what Gayle was looking to get out of his apparent indiscretion, together with everything else, it was a sad reminder of how far down the slope the once-mighty West Indians have travelled. For the fans of West Indian cricket, it is all but pointless to hope any further. The dream of a turnaround stands shattered. Unlike the begging bowl that has kept getting shattered by successive Pakistani governments only to be pieced together and presented to global financial agencies without much of a delay, the dream of a West Indian renaissance stands well and truly shattered.
Though it now stands a voice from the distant past, the generation that grew up following cricket from the mid-1970s till the early 1990s, there were always two teams one supported; one’s own and the West Indies. The latter was the universal favourite. The recent losses — and the manner of losses — in Sri Lanka and Australia, and the way things have gone from bad to worse in the last decade or so may not drop a hint about what the ‘blackwash’ was like, but, have no doubts; the West Indies did capture the fancy of the world like no one had done before and no one has done since.
Let’s get the stats out to convince the naysayer, for there is always someone who would have a reason to differ. By the end of 2015, the West Indies has played 512 Test matches, winning 164, with a win-loss ratio (WLR) of 0.93. Beginning in 1928, the team had played 154 Tests till end-1974; the WLR being 1.02, which basically indicates that it was winning and losing in just about equal proportions.
Then started the high tide, and what a tide it was. From 1975 to end-1990 — a period of 15 years — the Caribbeans registered 59 victories against 20 losses for a WLR of 2.95, which is just about as many as three wins for every loss.
But then came the low tide, and, again, what a low tide it has been. Over the next five years — from 1991 to 1995 — the ratio went down to 1.7; from 1996 to 2000, it dropped to 0.6. The circle got completed in the next 15 years — from 2001 to 2015 — with the WLR having slipped to an abysmal 0.33, which, in effect, means three losses for every single win. The high and low have both been spectacular in matching terms.
But when they were good, they were frighteningly good; a true terror that could — and did — annihilate just about anybody anytime anywhere. Such supremacy in terms of quality and quantity has never been witnessed in world cricket. It was as complete a domination as possible.
There would be many who will love to cite the Australian era of modern cricket as a ground of comparison, but corresponding data will probably set the context right.
Against an overall 785 Tests, Australia has a WLR of 1.77. During the 1975-1990 West Indian dominance, Australia managed 0.92. As the West Indian slide began, Australia started rising from the ashes, registering 2.1 between 1991 and 1996, and reached its peak during the 1996-2000 period when the ratio touched 2.75. In the last 15 years, the Aussies have gone down a shade to 2.65.
While the West Indians were ruling the world — from 1975 to 1990, that is — the others were as far behind as India, which could manage just 0.66, followed by New Zealand 0.67 and England 0.79. Bangladesh and Zimbabwe were not there in the arena, and Sri Lanka had just started out in the early 1980s and they were not turning any heads with their on-field performance with a WLR of 0.11.
The Australians, as we have seen, managed a respectable 0.92, but the team that could hold its head really high during the blackwash was Pakistan. Starting out in 1952, Pakistan was managing a rather pathetic win-loss ratio of 0.52 by the end of 1974. From 1975 to 1990, it shot up to a very handsome 1.59; the only WLR that went up during the period other than the West Indian WLR of course.
Gayle decided he had spent enough time out of international spotlight and grabbed it with both hands and a few other things — mouth, for instance.
This, in no small measure, was due to the change in captaincy in 1976 when Mushtaq Muhammad converted the team into a fighting result-oriented unit and delivered some wonderful knockout punches against all and sundry, including some counter-punches to the mighty West Indies. Mushtaq was followed by Imran Khan and Javed Miandad — with a bit of Zaheer Abbas thrown in every now and then — and it was owing to them all that Pakistan managed an impressive three-fold upward move in terms of win-loss ratio, and then sustained it at 1.6 through 1991-95, which represents Pakistan’s peak win ratio at any point in the time periods under discussion.
There is one mainstream team still left; South Africa which has recently lost its number one Test ranking. It had to sit out the West Indian dominance owing to the apartheid-related ban from 1970 to 1992. Before the ban came into force, it had a WLR of 0.49 and in the last 15 years in the global spotlight, it has managed 1.73.
Talking of peak win ratio at any point in time, the West Indies 2.95 (1975-95) again heads the list, followed by Australia 2.75 (1996-2000), South Africa 2.5 (1996-2000), India 1.66 (1996-2000), Pakistan 1.6 (1991-95), England 1.48 (1877-1974), Sri Lanka 1.2 (2000-15) and New Zealand 0.81 (1996-2000).
As one can see through the prism of statistics, the modern greats — Australia and South Africa, basically — have not enjoyed as complete a dominance as did the roaring West Indian juggernaut in its heyday. Critically, the Australian and South African peak values relate to five-year periods, while the West Indian WLR spans 15 years. Simply put, the West Indians were much better for much longer than anyone in the history of the game.
It’s a pity that the West Indies today is not even a shadow of its illustrious past. It’s the darkness of a gloomy suffocating night that has engulfed their being. It’s not even a stormy night when lightening would tear away the darkness ever so transiently. It’s unadulterated darkness. The buffoonery of Gayle only added a layer to the pall of doom that has descended upon the royalty of yore.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, January 24th, 2016
