“What do you plan to do to answer the call?”

If you are like me hoping for West Indies cricket to revive from the 25-year old effects of the famine in this land of plenty, the performances in New Zealand must have made you feel only despair.

However, on the morning after when we reflect on the nuggets of gold that shone through from the bottom of the murky water, we must feel a sense of possibility of renewal and encouragement.   Surely, young Alzarri Joseph bowling at 135 can be taught to swing the ball through the air and move it off the pitch. Equipped with such skills and knowledge, Joseph will enormously enhance his wicket-taking capacity. 

He obviously thinks seriously about his batting potential and has the makings of an above average all-rounder – if only there is assistance and encouragement for him from our reservoir of former world class players; they surely must feel the pain of their legacy sliding away, being neglected by a generation that does not seem to care for its bountiful inheritance.  

Take Jason Holder, it’s obvious that the captaincy is burdening him and obstructing his emergence as a gifted all-rounder who can add to the several 50s and the double hundred in Test Cricket against quality opposition.   As a medium fast bowler, his mode is too fixed in defence, bowling to restrict batsmen but with little effort to prise them out.

Ah… perhaps the find of the tour is the young batsman-wicket keeper, Joshua Da Silva.  Depending on my memory he is the only player of Portuguese ancestry to have emerged since Stephen Camacho, the bespectacled Guyanese opener with Roy Fredericks who made useful scores and then took on administrative duties with the West Indies board.

“Josh” seems capable of going beyond Camacho’s level of achievement.  However, he has to “dig-in” and set his ambitions on becoming a top class Test cricketer capable of playing long innings based on a secure technique, a strong mental approach and the ability to give rein to his West Indian inheritance for stroke-play.

Jermaine Blackwood is all daredevil.   Maybe though he has that West Indian spirit that refuses to surrender to Test cricket norms. We have to identify it and make it operational in the interest of reviving that West Indian legacy of batting dictatorship to bowlers.

I like too the spirit of exploration I detected in young Chemar Holder; his bounding to the wicket with hope on his mind for conquest can be utilized and turned into a value that he can enhance the West Indian game of the first quarter of the 21^st century.

There are others on the periphery of this tour, young men with loads of West Indian talent in batting and bowling who can be nurtured and made to emulate the great West Indians from the 1930s to the 1990s.  

The question though is why a generation of players with quality potential has not been able to convert talent into world class capacity?  Is it that the grounding has not been sufficiently secured in technical competence, mental strength, cricketing intelligence and a deep appreciation of what is demanded of a West Indian Test cricketer?

Lacking too is an appreciation of the institutional structures required to allow our players to grow into international professionalism in cricket.

A thought just ran across my mind.  Remember the humiliation and school boy flogging that Lloyd and his team got from the Australians on the 1975/76 tour Down Under?  

The talents of the skipper himself, Richards, Holding, Roberts, Julien, Fredericks and a number of others were all present in the beings of the players.

However, the capacity to harness and direct those talents did not exist.  The West Indies board was nonplused as to what was required, the territorial boards existed to mimic colonial governorship, all the time aspiring to live in the governor’s mansion.

It fell to Lloyd and “head” coach Dr. Rudi Webster to sharpen their thinking and enhance their capability to come to terms with the needs of the mental game in professional sport.   

Then came a cricketing entrepreneur who did not play by the rules in the form of an outgoing, outrageous Aussie who decided that the old game needed renewal.

Kerry Packer created a league for professional teams and especially demanded of the West Indians, whom he had put in “pink”, to get with it or be prepared for the next flight home.  The result was the emergence of the West Indies (1978-1990s) as the greatest cricket team ever, arguably the most dominant sporting team in history.

But they first had to endure the ignorance of a colonial board which failed to understand the need for change.  Instead, Stollmeyer and company banned the professionals and ignored the need for professionalism.

Unfortunately, succeeding West Indian and territorial boards have not felt the need for inspiration, perspiration and the innovation demanded of them. They have stood on the position that the West Indian cricketing genius would continue to produce a long line of irresistible fast bowlers and dominant batsmen.   Those boards assumed that the spirit, technique and a full appreciation of West Indian cricketing heritage, would have automatically flowed onto the world stage and make us once again dominant.

Well, we have found out and continue to feel the pain of ignorance that “it though work by osmosis”.  We shall not awake one morning and find that a world-conquering team of West Indians has prised itself loose from some mummery.

So what can we do? What do we have to do to make a difference?  Creation of the conditions, grounds and the wherewithal for teams in the North Zonal competitions is one major part of the responsibility we have taken on. 

The other element of the call we have all answered to is to “make West Indies Great Again” – I hate to borrow from and paraphrase that charlatan, but you get what I mean.   Our task in this generation of administrators is to do what Lloyd, Webster, Murray spurred on by the unforgiving demands of Packer’s desire for something new and his refusal to accept mediocrity, did.  We have to do something to share in the legacy left for us and those to come.

Imagine meeting your grandchildren in Hell, Heaven, Nirvana, Valhalla where the Vikings reside (or wherever you plan to) and having to answer the question: “So grandpa, what did you do when you had responsibility for cricket in the North Zone? How many outstanding Test players have you assisted to emerge through your effort?

“What did you do to rekindle that great spirit of West Indianism left you by Headley, Constantine, the three Ws, Worrell’s leadership genius, Sobers, Kanhai and the great fast bowlers stretching from Constantine, through Hall and Griffith and the irresistible force of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who laid destruction along the path they trod?  What did you do grandpa?

“What are you going to say my brother, my sister? How are you going to account for your stewardship, remembering that the God of Abraham did not settle for burying the talents in the ground afraid to invest them to get a return?”

Well, I want to sleep at nights knowing that I can be part of an initiative to do something about converting the talents we now have in abundance into something of substance that we can see and feel.  I want to have answers for my grandsons now six and two when the time comes.

I have an idea I want to share.  Can we lay down the basis for the reimagining and reawakening of the great West Indian spirit by creating a team of young players who we vow to train-up in the way of those who set down the foundation for dominance by West Indian cricketers?

“I hope someday you will join me” (Lennon) to create that reawakening in the flesh beyond shouting uselessly at the stars which are not aligned to our do nothingness.