The official schedule for India’s 2023 Caribbean Tour has finally been realized. The tour will be comprised of two Tests, three ODI’s, and five T20Is. The two Tests, to be played in Dominica and Trinidad & Tobago respectively, will mark the commencement of both the West Indies and India’s participation in the International Cricket Council (ICC) new two-year 2023-25 Test Championship.
Currently listed at eight in the ICC rankings of its participating Test teams, the West Indies will play thirteen matches during the 2023-25 cycle. If there is any hope of meaningful progression through the rankings to a much more commendable position such as a targeted top-five spot, a definitive plan will have to be developed towards the achievement of any such lofty ambitions!
Hosts England and their arch-rivals Australia are currently involved in the 2023 Ashes Series as the very first engagement for either country in the new 2023-25 ICC Test Championship cycle. Within the first three days of the opening Test, being played at Headingley, 740 runs had already been scored and 20 wickets captured. Thereby, providing a clear example of the standards that the West Indies will need to emulate if they are to become competitive against the world’s better Test teams.
Some of the outstanding individual performances in the England-Australia 2023 Ashes series have also provided sterling examples for West Indies players to try to emulate. Joe Root’s first innings century, and how it was constructed, is certainly deserving of review and consideration by any of the current West Indies batsmen with ambitions of becoming similarly great by the time their Test careers have ended.
So too should the outstanding discipline exhibited by all the fast bowlers, both English and Australian, in overcoming the unfavorable Headingley pitch to capture wickets at vital stages of the Test. Stuart Broad, Josh Hazelwood, and Pat Cummings have all bowled with admirable discipline during the Test.
For Kevin Sinclair, the young Guyanese right-hand off-spinner who could highly likely make his Test debut during the forthcoming India series, the Australian Nathan Lyons’s bowling in both innings of the Test would also be worth studying. Indeed, Lyon’s entire career and his progress from relative obscurity to now being just less than a handful short of 500 Test Wickets would be well worth the consideration of both Sinclair, and even from a much broader perspective Cricket West Indies (CWI) as well.
Lyons’ first two years of involvement in Test cricket were not in any way outstanding. But backed by his self-belief and outstandingly supported by Cricket Australia, he did the arduous work that was necessary for him to refine his skills and broaden his arsenal of wicket-taking deliveries. The results over the next three years were dramatic as Lyons transformed himself into the most successful off-spinner Australia has ever produced!
Australia just recently defeated India in the 2023 World Test Championship (WTC) final to be justifiably crowned as champions and confirmed as the world’s number-one ranked team. Their current Ashes series hosts England are ranked number three, while the defeated championship finalists India now occupy second spot in the rankings.
As it commences the new 2023-25 Test Championship cycle with the two scheduled matches of its forthcoming Caribbean tour India will, therefore, be seeking to get its campaign started on a winning note against their eight-ranked host West Indies. As the great former West Indies fast bowler Sr Andy Roberts recently noted, however, there’s a noticeable degree of arrogance and complacency evident in India’s cricket late. It was that exact arrogance and complacency Sir Andy has suggested, that was a big part of their embarrassingly massive loss to Australia in the recently concluded 2023 WTC final.
West Indies for their part will be hoping for India to again demonstrate the very same arrogance and complacency by a) perhaps not sending their strongest available team to the Caribbean for the Test series, and even more importantly b) perhaps underestimating the ability of their hosts to spring a few surprises and be admirably competitive in both matches.
Notwithstanding any generously India-provided advantages, the West Indies will be wanting to enter the series and get its own new WTC cycle off and running most positively. The first order of business towards achieving such an admirable objective will be for the West Indies Selectors to put aside their nationalistic and personal favorite inclinations in choosing the very best available players to participate in both of the series’ scheduled Tests.
No more country-boy support and player favoritism on display as has tended to be too often the case most recently. Only the most suitably deserving players to be included in the fourteen-member squads for each the two scheduled Tests. And in both instances for the very best maroon cap-clad XI to be striding onto the field at the start of India’s innings.
In determining the composition of the India series squad (s) the West Indies Selectors will be challenged to have their eye on both the present as well as the immediate future. The 2023-25 WTC cycle will be a full two years in duration with, as previously mentioned, thirteen Tests to be played. The longevity of certain senior Test players, specifically the now thirty-four-year-old Kemar Roach should, therefore, be seriously considered. For how long over the next two years can Roach remain fully fit, operating at his prime and taking wickets with sufficient regularity? That will have to be one of the major questions facing the Selectors in the immediate future.
What is the most ideal combination of batsmen and all-rounders, both in terms of quantity and quality, which will be required to ensure that enough runs are posted on the board whenever the West Indies bats? That will be another of the fundamental questions needing to be asked and answered by the West Indies Selectors.
Who should be chosen as the best possible candidate to occupy the crucial number three position will be another of the dilemmas facing the Selectors. The position is best suited to a batsman who can seamlessly switch from initial defense, should one of the openers fall early, to outright attack when it becomes warranted by the match situation.
The Selectors’ current choice of Raymon Reifer is regarded by most as not sufficiently suitable. It will, therefore, be most interesting to see whether the Selectors stubbornly continue with Reifer as their preferred number three or make the change that would now appear to be most obviously required.
Capturing an opponent’s twenty wickets for sufficiently low combined totals is the only guaranteed way to win a Test match. For all the deliberations over the ideal combinations of West Indies batsmen for the India matches and beyond to those over the next two years, however, the far more essential selectorial task will be to identify the group of bowlers who can consistently capture twenty wickets in a Test.
Which combination of its currently available crop of bowlers, quickies, spinners both front-line and occasional, as well as medium-paced trundlers will be sufficiently ideal for the West Indies to consistently dismiss their opponent’s batsmen for gettable scores? That’s the million-dollar question now facing the West Indies Selectors.
Once the most suitable players have been identified and a core group constituted as key proponents of the two-year 2023-25 WTC campaign, the next requirement will be the development and execution of plans which will consistently produce the required winning results within the next two years! Only with such astute planning will the West Indies have even a ghost of a chance of achieving meaningful upwards progress through the ICC Test rankings.
As the old cliché suggests “to fail to plan is to plan to fail!