CHENNAI: “I was the headmaster at the school you went to”
This is a famous dialogue from a Tamil feature film Pokkiri, where the protagonist says it as a punchline after outwitting one of the villains. If ever there was an international T20I side that could use the same — directing at other teams and it would be justified — it is probably the West Indies men of the decade gone by.
After all, they were the original trailblazers in the shortest format of the game. And it did not begin in 2012 in Sri Lanka. Four years after the advent of the T20 format and a year after the first T20 International was played, the Stanford T20 tournament — the first of its kind featuring several territories — happened in the Caribbean. It was a revelation of sorts as the tournament saw 77 sixes hit over 17 matches with Guyana walking away with $1mn.
Although the tournament didn’t survive the test of time, the seeds were sown for the Caribbean revolution in the shortest format. What followed was a decade of world domination in T20s by the West Indies superstars. Name an early record in the format and they owned it.
When the Indian Premier League (IPL) broke ground, there were bidding wars for them. Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo in the 2010 auction, for example. Players were building a legacy of their own, winning titles for the franchises they were turning up for. And it wasn’t just a blind gung-ho batting approach, trying to smash every ball. They had mastered the art of six-hitting, death-overs bowling, thinking match-ups and whatnot.
“You think about the mix; four or five bowlers, their attributes, how the captains might use those against you, what damage you can lay upon them,” wrote Chris Gayle, arguably the greatest batter to have played the format, in his book 'Six machine'.
“You put those things in your mind as early as possible so that you can sleep on it and cement ideas into actions. When you wake up, you refresh your mind and go back to the big thoughts. And when you go out there your mind will click back to those images and thoughts and you will be ready,” he added.
And when a bunch of such thinking cricketers with incredible skill sets come together, it is only a matter of time before they become world-beaters. Between 2012 to 2016, West Indies were the team to beat in T20 World Cups. Under Darren Sammy, they won the title twice and reached the semifinals in 2014.
Now, Sammy might not make an all-star West Indies T20I side as a player. However, it was his leadership that brought the mavericks together and led them to glory. And he did so at a time when the West Indies Cricket Board was in turmoil.
Perhaps, at some level, it is the adversity and the external factors that spurred on the band of superstars to show what they could do. If it was James Faulkner’s comments in 2014, two years on, they had more.
For starters, they didn’t have the team jerseys when they landed in India for the World Cup. Then the ‘short of brains’ comment from Mark Nicholas, or Virat Kohli riling up Lendl Simmons in the semifinal and more. When Marlon Samuels felt that the world was against him in a World Cup final, there was very little the opponents could do to stop him.
However, since then they have not been the same. Six years have gone by, and an entire generation of bonafide T20 legends have moved on. While their stars are still top picks in every franchise league, some — Sunil Narine to name one — are not a part of the international side any more.
They faced an early exit at the 2021 World Cup. What more, the teams have caught up with them in the last few years. If all that’s not enough, they have left out their best batter — Shimron Hetmyer — after he missed a rescheduled flight. That they lost their opening game at the ongoing T20 World Cup against Scotland only hurt them more.
Despite all that, they are still a team that can’t be written off. Mainly because, more than anyone else, they are aware that West Indies are not the world beaters anymore. They are a team in transition under a young captain in Nicholas Pooran. They have some exciting talents in the squad. At the same time, they know they have shoes that are impossible to fill.
All-rounder Jason Holder put it poignantly in an interview with the ICC. “I am not taking anything away from the past players. But, I think they had the opportunity to be the stars they are and they have done it extremely well. This is a new generation for West Indies cricket,” he said in the video shared by the ICC.
“The teams which would have won in 2012 and 2016 were pretty dominant. They had some very big T20 players when you look at that in the context of world cricket. In this current team, we have got some young budding stars who have really established themselves on the circuit. It's just for us now to be a lot more senior, I guess, or spend a bit more time on the international circuit doing some of the things,” Holder added in a press conference on Thursday.
West Indies have not yet made it to the Super 12s. In fact, with 80 per cent chance of rain in Hobart on Friday, if both the games get cancelled, they might face a first-round exit. But their quality cannot be judged by it.
For they are not the headmasters in the school of T20 cricket anymore. They are a new generation of students trying to build a reputation of their own among fellow learners.