Tony Becca
BRIAN LARA loves to have his way, everyone knows that, and almost everyone believes he does have his way to the extent that when Dave Mohammed was left out of the West Indies team for the second Test against India, cricket fans around the region were convinced that Lara, the captain who had spoken highly of Mohammed going into the first Test, had changed his opinion about the skill, the potential of the left-arm wrist spinner.
Apparently, however, that was not the case at least not according to Lara.
Speaking in St. Kitts a few days ago, Lara said that if you got a spinner that's doing very well in the regional tournament, he should be encouraged because a spinner adds variety to the attack.
"Dave Mohammed got close to 50 wickets. We've seen Omari Banks do well with both bat and ball, and these guys should be included because any good combination would include a spinner," said Lara.
CENSORED
Apart from his disappointment that a genuine spin bowler was not included in the team, Lara also lamented the fact that an out and out fast bowler was not selected for the second Test match and that one is not selected for the current Test match.
In other words, it appears that Lara, the captain who has also said that he has been censored, that he has been told to curb his comments, and that he and the selectors "are not singing from the same hymn sheet", hardly has a say, if any at all, in the selection of the West Indies team.
While that is not surprising, while that has been the case since the arrival of coach Bennett King, that is not good for West Indies cricket certainly not with a man like Lara as the captain of the team.
Although those who employed King as the coach were not the same people who selected Lara as the captain, they should have known what King had demanded, they should have known what Lara expected, and they now have a problem on their hands.
Apart from his greatness as a batsman, Lara knows the game, he has ideas and convictions, he has a strong personality, he is a leader, and as a leader, as a champion performer, he is not going to sit back and just listen to someone telling him about the game - certainly not about who will play, not about bowling changes and field settings and not about how to dismiss a batsman.
Lara may not have meant it to come out the way it sounded, but it did not come over too well, not when he said, apparently in response to King's comments sometime ago that West Indies had no spin bowlers of quality, that "I'm not going to pay too much mind to the fact that they're not top-class spinners" and that "many top-class spinners start their careers very low key and have moved on to become very good spinners", but more so when he said, "I suppose we've got to play with what we've got", and that "we have to make do with what we have and try as much as possible to get a game out there."
FRUSTRATED
While Lara may not have meant it to sound that way, while he probably did not mean to suggest that West Indies do not have the chance of a snow ball in Hell, it is possible, however, that he has become so frustrated with the selectors and especially the coach - the man who has the final say in who plays, that he, a man who is accustomed to having his own way most of if not all the time, really believes that this West Indies team, with six specialist batsmen and one batting all-rounder, with only three specialist bowlers and no specialist spin bowler, with batsmen Christopher Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Marlon Samuels parading as spin bowlers, and with three ordinary pace bowlers along with a batting all-rounder who also bowls pace, have no chance to defeat a team which, in three innings, has scored 241, 521 for six declared and 588 for eight declared.
Although Harbhajan Singh has finally been selected, Lara is probably as mad about what is happening with the selection of his team as he was happy with what was happening with the selection of the Indian team - a team that despite its history, despite the success of its spin bowlers over the years, had, in the first two Test matches, refused to pick offspinner Harbhajan, and with one specialist spin bowler in Anil Kumble, with West Indies hanging on at 298 for nine and at 294 for seven in the second innings of the first two Test matches, missed two glorious chances of winning two Test matches.
"He (Harbhajan) is definitely a top-class spinner," said Lara a few days ago. "His record shows that. If he'd played in Antigua or even in St. Lucia he would definitely have been a handful compared to (Virender) Sehwag."
In those two Test matches, Sehwag, the batsman who had taken three wickets in his previous 45 Test matches, returned the impressive figures of two wickets for 32 runs off 11 overs, two for 39 off 11, three for 33 off 16.1, and one for 48 off 30 overs.
