‘Chief’s’ concerns

As a former Barbados Under-19 captain, West Indies Youth and Barbados senior player, Dave ‘Chief’ Cumberbatch holds cricket dear to his heart and wants to see the men in maroon who were once formidable from the late 1970s to early 1990s, return to the zenith of world cricket.

Cumberbatch, an Attorney-at-law and a former left-arm spin bowler, said the West Indies recent performance against South Africa exposed regional batsmen’s inability to handle fast bowling.

“I am not bashing the players, but this is from my heart. I want to see West Indies cricket return to the pinnacle of world cricket. I want to see it return to its rightful place. It is the administration of our cricket really that has dropped the ball in this regard.

“We have not paid enough attention to the preparation of our cricket pitches. We have allowed some slow and low pitches to be prepared for our batsmen and that is why they have become   primarily front foot players with limited ability to play off of the back foot. This is where the administration of the cricket must take firm and decisive action,” Cumberbatch told Barbados TODAY.

“Our biggest failure was the inability of our players to play fast bowling. St. Lucia’s wicket is believed to be the fastest and bounciest (wicket) in the Caribbean. It was a foregone conclusion in my mind that once we played in St. Lucia we were going to lose this series.

“It is inexplicable really that Cricket West Indies could play against South Africa, a team whose main strength is fast bowling, I know that Covid-19 may help to determine where games are played, but how could we play there and expect to compete against South Africa?

“If anybody has cricketing knowledge, they can see that most of our batsmen are what you call front-foot players and whenever they get on a pitch that the ball bounces above their waist they are at sea. Presently, all of our batsmen, perhaps with the exception of Jason Holder and Alzarri Joseph, do not play short bowling well.  I know that both of them are not batsmen in the classical sense but they are the only two in our team who play short bowling adequately,” Cumberbatch explained.

The first T20 International between West Indies and Australia is expected to bowl off tomorrow Friday at the Darren Sammy Cricket Stadium. Gauging from the team’s recent performance against South Africa, Cumberbatch is not too optimistic that the West Indies batsmen can withstand the visitors’ bowling attack. If the conditions are similar to those which West Indies had against South Africa, he expects the regional side will be in serious trouble.

Cumberbatch, who captained Barbados Youth for two years straight in the 1980s and was considered an astute skipper, said he meant well for the West Indies cricket team and had no intentions of bashing them. However, he noted that those at the top who govern West Indies cricket were partly to be blamed for West Indies’ poor batting performance including that of talented Barbadian Shai Hope. Cumberbatch shared his views on where he thought Hope – who in recent times has been bowled repeatedly – was going wrong with his batting.

“Shai Hope is an extremely talented player. He is one of the best drivers of a cricket ball I have ever seen; however, he is bowled much too often. To solve his challenges, we must start from the premise that anytime a batsman is bowled as regularly as he is, there should be cause for concern.    

“The problem has to do with the fact that if a ball is pitched about three yards down the wicket from Shai Hope, he is in no man’s land and he always seems surprised as though the ball has done something unusual. In most cases when he gets out it is not that the ball has done something unusual but yet he seems surprised when he is bowled. I strongly suspect that when Mr Hope settles down to bat, he is setting himself up mentally and physically for a half-volley or pitched-up delivery,” he said.

“Whenever it is not a half-volley and the ball is pitched three or so yards away from him, he is totally at sea. So, if I were his coach, I would not bowl a half-volley at Shai Hope in the nets at all. He would have to bat every ball that is pitched three yards away from him because if you look at his pattern of dismissal, you can see it is repetitive.

“It seems that everybody in world cricket knows this and yet the West Indies don’t know it because we continue to say that Shai Hope is out of form, and he should open, he should bat this place and that place.  He is not out of form at all. It is a mental and technical problem. We are not being fair to him. We are not telling him the truth. The truth is that he is too talented to be getting out to the balls that he gets out to.

“Anytime a batsman and this must be stressed, anytime you see a batsman is bowled regularly, it means that something is wrong with his technique. I keep hearing that the problem he has is a matter of being out of form but I view it differently.  It is an irrefutable principle, one that has been around for as long as cricket has been played, that anytime a batsman is bowled often something must be wrong and if we go back as I said two, three years, Shai Hope is bowled much too often,” Cumberbatch added.

morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb