Monday 23 April 2007

All is not well in the Windies Camp

Yesterday at a press conference he gave a less than ringing endorsement of Ramnaresh Sarwan - saying that he seemed to be the most obvious candidate to take up the West Indies captaincy as he was the vice-captain, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the case that vice-captain becomes captain. I think Sarwan's reported drinking and partying activities have put a scar on his leadership credentials. Yet he remains the only obvious candidate. Darren Ganga is yet to cement his place in the test side and a split captaincy is far from ideal in a scenario where Sarwan is the more experienced (internationally speaking) player of the two.
Putting this aside I don't think Bennett King has done much to improve the West Indies over his period in charge. Sure they are a decent one-day side (pre-world cup), but that seems to be more due to the talent on board rather than a team gelling to be greater than the sum of the parts a la New Zealand / Sri Lanka.
I'm not sure where I stand on this. I grew to love Lara the batsmen - outside of the two ginormous innings he played against England (whom I was supporting at the time). I don't think as an on field captain he was that bad - better than chanderpaul. It was his off-field disputes with the Board which seemed to filter onto the pitch ie. some really strange selections in the World Cup just gone (gone as far as the Windies team are concerned). They say Sarwan is a good on-field captain - assuming he gets the nod, we can see if ths is true. However, statement of the obvious - they have noone to replace him - not even a Hooper/Sarwan/Chanderpaul category player.

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