Tony Becca
THE YEAR 2005 will be remembered as a disappointing one for West Indies cricket, and after losing 2-0 to South Africa, drawing 1-1 with Pakistan, losing 2-0 to Sri Lanka and 3-0 to Australia, after winning only one match and losing the other 10, so should it be.
In a year which saw the players going on strike and the West Indies going into the first Test against South Africa and the series against Sri Lanka without their best players, there were, however, some outstanding performances - including, as a team, their performances against South Africa in the first Test and against Sri Lanka.
Against South Africa, the West Indies, without the likes of Brian Lara, Christopher Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan and thanks to Wavell Hinds and captain Shivnarine Chanderpaul who scored 213 and 203 not out respectively, went to within a catch or two of defeating the visitors after scoring 543 for five declared, and enforcing the follow-on, and against Sri Lanka, their bowling and their fielding was good enough to make the home team fight for every run on their way to victory.
FAILED IN FIRST TEST
Unfortunately for the West Indies, despite some brilliant individual performances, they did not carry through after the first Test against South Africa, after the first Test against Pakistan which they won by a commanding 276 runs, and after the encouraging performance in Sri Lanka.
For those who do not remember, those brilliant individual performances included Gayle's 317 versus South Africa in the fourth and final Test at the Antigua Recreation Ground and Dwayne Bravo's maiden century in the same match as the West Indies, replying to South Africa's 512 for four declared, posted 747.
WINNING EFFORT
They also included Fidel Edwards' five for 38, Gayle's five for 91, Lara's 130 and Chanderpaul's 153 not out in the winning effort against Pakistan at Kensington Oval, Corey Collymore's seven for 78 and Lara's 153 against Pakistan at Sabina Park, and they included Lara's 226 in the third and final Test against Australia in Adelaide as he eased past Allan Border's career record of 11,174 runs.
They also included some fine bowling by pacer Collymore and some wonderful performances by all-rounder Bravo and wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin against Australia - performances that saw Bravo, who, apart from bowling well, apart from fielding brilliantly, scoring a fantastic 113 in the second Test in Hobart while sharing a face-saving seventh-wicket partnership of 182 with Ramdin who chipped in with a solid and encouraging 71.
And what about Jamaica's performance during the year now fast ticking away?
It was a good year for Jamaica - despite their disappointing performance in the regional limited-overs tournament when, for the second time in a row, they finished fifth and failed to move out of the first round, and despite their disappointment in gaining only one selection on the West Indies team for next year's Youth World Cup.
Led first by Tamar Lambert and then by Hinds, Jamaica won both the Carib Beer Cup and the Carib Beer Shield.
In the battle for the Cup, Jamaica, in winning seven matches, drawing two, suffering a no-result in one and thanks to the performances of batsmen Donovan Pagon, Carlton Baugh Jr., David Bernard Jr., Brenton Parchment and then Gayle, Hinds and Marlon Samuels and to bowlers Jerome Taylor, Daren Powell, Dwight Washington, Nikita Miller and Odean Brown, tallied 95 points - 37 more than the Leeward Islands who finished in second place.
In the play-off for the shield, Jamaica, who based on the performance of the West Indies team during the year, may well have been like a one-eyed man in a blind man's country, confirmed its dominance by easily, almost effortlessly, knocking off the Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands in the semi-finals and in the final - won by an innings and 37 runs, won by eight wickets.
