Caribbean rumble?

IT is often said that the best players don't make the best coaches. To some extent it also applies to captains as well. The latest outburst by Ridley Jacobs, the veteran West Indies wicket-keeper on Brian Lara's captaincy is nothing new.

Jacobs who has decided to call it quits after a seven-year international career blamed Lara's poor captaincy for the plight of West Indies cricket today. To put the entire blame on Lara for all the ills of cricket in the Caribbean is not a fair assessment of the great man.

Lara as Jacobs reveals sets the tone for the whole team and always wants the spotlight which he describes as 'being selfish'.

When one has earned universal reputation as one of the greatest players the game has produced, the spotlight definitely will be on him for sure. Lesser mortals like Jacobs will have to take a back seat and wonder in awe at his achievements.

But the big question is, to what extent has Lara's wonderful accomplishments helped raise the standard of West Indies cricket? Did they not win the ICC Champions trophy in England last year under Lara's captaincy?

There is a saying that the captain is as good as his team. How good is this current crop of West Indies cricketers? They say good captaincy can make an average side great. Was Lara able to get the best out of his players?

According to Jacobs: "Most of the guys are keen and willing to put everything in the game, so there is hope. But more importantly there should be unity."

"With this captain it is not for the love of the game anymore, it's for him. A captain has to be able to motivate his team. He can't afford to be selfish."

Peter Walker, the former Glamorgan and England all-rounder in his coaching manual 'Winning Cricket' says: "If you are a batsman/skipper you must decide which is the best position for you to bat. You must be completely unselfish in this, for nothing arouses displeasure quicker than a captain who seeks all the plums for himself."

The greatest batsman the game has ever produced the late Sir Donald Bradman once said: "The skipper is like the master of a ship. He must exercise control and accept the responsibility." A batting genius though, Lara sadly fails to fall into this category.

However in Lara's defence it must be said that he never had the luxury of captaining teams like the ones that his predecessors Frank Worrell, Garfield Sobers, Clive Lloyd or Vivian Richards were given.

When Lara took over the reins West Indies cricket was in decline. If at all they were able to hold their head up high despite the many humiliating defeats they suffered at the hands of even weak opposition was due to the brilliance of one man - Lara.

Nothing could be more gratifying for this remarkable cricketer than to guide his team to victory in the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean. It could be his parting shot against all his critics before he hangs up his boots for good.

Blow hot, blow cold

West Indies cricket today can be described as something like blow hot, blow cold. The recently concluded series against South Africa in the Caribbean gave flashes of what this present West Indies side is capable of. The crux of the matter is that they are unable to achieve it consistently.

Without Lara and some of the other key players dropped over a contract dispute the West Indies almost came close to beating South Africa in the first Test at Georgetown.

With the return of Lara who played two magnificent knocks of 196 and 176 at Port of Spain and at Bridgetown, West Indies lost. Then at Antigua when Lara failed (dismissed for 4), West Indies came up with an awesome batting performance to post the seventh highest total in Test history - 747.

This high scoring game produced a world record of eight centuries in a Test match, a feat that had not been achieved before. A.B. de Villiers (114), skipper Graeme Smith (126), Jacques Kallis (147) and Ashwell Prince (131) scored hundreds in South Africa's total of 588-6 dec.

Forty-two percent of West Indies massive total was made up by Chris Gayle's monumental knock of 317. Ramnaresh Sarwan (127), captain Shiv Chanderpaul (127) and Dwayne Bravo (107) batted around him.

The previous record was seven hundreds in a Test match, which had been achieved on three occasions at Trent Bridge in 1938 between England (Barnett 126, Hutton 100, Paynter 216 n.o., Compton 102) and Australia (McCabe 232, Brown 133, Bradman 144), at Kingston in 1955 between West Indies (Walcott 155 & 110) and Australia (McDonald 127, Harvey 204, Miller 109, Archer 128, Benaud 121) and at Cape Town in 2003-04 between South Africa (Rudolph 101, Boucher 122, Gibbs 142, Kallis 130 n.o.) and West Indies (Gayle 116, Lara 115, Smith 105 n.o.).