History of The West Indian Cricket Team - Fall From Grace

Fall From Grace

During the early 1990s, the West Indies team was still reeling from the retirements of players like Jeff Dujon, Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner, and Michael Holding and when Viv Richards retired in 1991 it was an end of an era. This left a youthful and inexperienced side. Indeed after Richards' retirement the only players with significant experience were Richie Richardson (the captain), Desmond Haynes, who was soon dropped, Gus Logie, who was recalled and Roger Harper who came and went. However, this did not immediately affect their performance. Richie Richardson capably picked up the captaincy from Richards and Brian Lara was waiting in the wings, as were a new crop of young players such as Ian Bishop, Jimmy Adams, Carl Hooper, Phil Simmons, Keith Arthurton and Winston Benjamin. It was five more years before the West Indies lost a series, but they had a number of close shaves before then. Making a comeback to international cricket, South Africa played its first Test match in Bridgetown, a match which was attended by fewer than 10,000 people because of a boycott. Needing 201 to win on the last day, South Africa reached 123 for 2 before Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh took the remaining 8 wickets for 25 runs. In 1992–93, the West Indies defeated Australia by one run in Adelaide, where a loss would have cost them the series. In 1994–95, the West Indies salvaged a draw in India when, after losing the first Test and drawing the second, they secured a win in the third. In 1992, the West Indies once again failed to qualify for the World Cup semi-finals.

Australia finally defeated the West Indies 2–1 in 1994–95 to become the unofficial world champions of Test cricket. The 1996 World Cup ended with a defeat in the semi-final, which forced Richie Richardson to end his career. The captaincy passed over to Courtney Walsh and then in 1998 to Brian Lara. The West Indies made their first ever official tour to South Africa in 1998–99. It was a disaster, starting with player revolts and ending with a 5–0 defeat. The 1999 World Cup campaign ended in the group stages. The next year, England won a series against the West Indies for the first time in thirty-one years. The West Indies ended the decade with another 5–0 defeat, this time in Australia.

For most of the 1990s, the West Indian batting lineup was dominated by Brian Lara. Lara became a regular in the side after the retirement of Viv Richards in 1991. In 1993–94, he scored 375 against England in Antigua, breaking Sobers' world record for the highest individual score in Test cricket. He continued his fine form playing for Warwickshire in the 1994 English County Championship, posting seven first-class hundreds in eight innings (including the Test match 375). The last of these was a 501 not out against Durham, which improved upon Hanif Mohammad's thirty-five-year-old record as the highest score in first-class cricket. The West Indian bowling attack was spearheaded by Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, the latter setting a then world record of 519 wickets. However, these two had both retired by 2001, and their successors failed to maintain the high standards that Ambrose and Walsh had set. Despite the emergence of some good batsmen like Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan, Brian Lara remained the crucial figure of the side.

After a 2–0 defeat to New Zealand in 1999–00, Lara was replaced as captain by Jimmy Adams, who initially enjoyed series wins against Zimbabwe and Pakistan. However, a 3–1 defeat to England and a 5–0 whitewash by Australia saw him replaced by Carl Hooper for the 2000–01 visit by South Africa. By the time Lara was restored to the captaincy in 2002–03, series had been lost to South Africa, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, New Zealand and India. The only series win of note was against India (although Zimbabwe and Bangladesh were also beaten) as the West Indies plummeted to eighth place in the world-rankings, below all the other established Test nations.

After losing the first series of his second captaincy period to world champions Australia, Lara secured success against Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, before another poor run saw 3–0 defeats in 4-Test series against both South Africa and England. In the drawn fourth Test against England, Lara became the only man to regain the world record for highest individual Test score by scoring 400 not out, once again in Antigua, bettering Matthew Hayden's 380 against Zimbabwe the previous year. The West Indies were then whitewashed 4–0 in England. Lara's last act as captain was to win the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy, a one-day competition second only to the Cricket World Cup, at the Oval, London – a win that was a welcome surprise for the Caribbean which had just been hit by Hurricane Ivan.

This joy was short-lived as a major dispute broke out in 2005 between the West Indian Players Association (WIPA) and the Cricket Board. The point of contention was clause 5 of the tour contract which gave WICB the sole and exclusive right to arrange for sponsorship, advertising, licensing, merchandising and promotional activities relating to WICB or any WICB Team. Digicel were the sponsors of the West Indian Team, while most of the players had contracts with Cable & Wireless. This conflict, coupled with a payment dispute meant that the West Indies initially announced a team absent Lara and a number of other leading West Indians for South Africa's visit in 2004–05, leading to Shivnarine Chanderpaul becoming captain. Some of these players did, in the end, compete. However, the dispute had not been resolved and rumbled on, leading to a second-string side being named for the tour of Sri Lanka in 2005. A resolution did not arise until October 2005, when a full-strength side was finally named for the 2005–06 tour of Australia. It was on this tour that Brian Lara overtook Australian Allan Border as the highest run-scorer in Test match cricket, despite the West Indies losing the series 3–0.