Clive Lloyd urges ‘greedy’ Caribbean players to develop passion for cricket, not money
From POST
Port of Spain (Trinidad): Former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd has urged current cricketers from the Caribbean region to show their passion for the sport and recommit themselves to the improvement of the game. Widely considered as the most successful test captain of all time, Lloyd said that the players must develop a passion for cricket, shunning their greed for excessive money.
“We must have our best players playing in cricket — all aspects of our cricket,” he said in an interview with former West Indies fast bowler Ian Bishop.
“You can’t just think that you want all the money. People are being paid pretty well but you must have some love for West Indies cricket. And at the moment I’m not seeing how it could move forward. I would like to see more of a skill set,” Lloyd added.
The legendary captain, who played in 110 tests and 87 one day internationals for West Indies between 1974 and 1985, said the regional players are being overwhelmed by their opponents.
“You look at our players and you are not seeing this extra fight that is needed to compete. We don’t seem to be competing against other nations. They seemed to be out maneuvering us in all departments of the game, which is unfortunate,” he said.
“We still have people here who are interested in the game, people still support cricket and we have to because as West Indians we want our cricket to get back up that hill. But at the moment it is not there. We have one or two good players, no doubt about that, but we are not kicking on,” he added.
Lloyd, who captained West Indies to an unbeaten run of 27 matches, also wants to see the utilization of more former regional players to help in developing cricket in their respective territories.
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England’s West Indies tour offers Ashley Giles chance to raise profile
By Vic Marks From The Observer
On the face of it the trip to the Caribbean does not look like the most daunting of missions. There are three 50-over matches in Antigua and three T20s in Barbados. So the cricket, if not the venues, will bear some similarities to what England will experience in Chittagong next month when the World T20 gets under way.
The opposition may be the World T20 champions, yet West Indies had lost five T20 fixtures in a row before they just managed to defeat Ireland in Jamaica on Friday (mind you, England have won only one of their last five, so it hardly seems a clash of titans).
So this has the makings of a lovely little trip with a fresh, young side devoid of many world-weary cricketers. But it is never that simple. As usual there are sub-plots. England travel with their T20 squad plus Nottinghamshire’s Harry Gurney. As captain Stuart Broad said on departure they have to “blend” very quickly. No doubt the team ethic will be admirable but does this England squad have sufficient quality and experience? One source of encouragement is the knowledge that it is possible to win the World T20 on a roller-coaster run when everything clicks just at the right time. England did that in the Caribbean in 2010 with Paul Collingwood (now one of the coaches) in charge and Kevin Pietersen scoring most of the runs. So did West Indies in Sri Lanka in 2012.
If somehow England were to win in Bangladesh then the interviews for the head coach position, which take place immediately after the tournament, would surely be an attractive prospect for Ashley Giles. It may not be logical that Giles’ credentials for the job should be judged by what happens in the next month in a variety of white-ball matches but there is a certain inevitability about that. If England won the World T20, or even made the semi-finals with such a callow squad, then Giles would be in credit. If they flounder badly, that interview will be trickier.
In the Caribbean it will be intriguing to see how England’s T20 specialists go about the three 50-over matches at the start of the tour. The “old firm” of Alex Hales and Michael Lumb have never played a 50-over match for England but they will surely have their chance in Antigua. Meanwhile the newcomers, Stephen Parry and Moeen Ali, will want to become embedded rapidly.
The Lancastrian Parry, 28, has played only six first-class matches in his life. So here is the ultimate white-ball specialist, who has the advantage that his opponents will be none too familiar with his left-arm spin. Ali, 26, is a more conventional pick in the sense that he plays in all formats at Worcester, where he had an exceptional season in 2013 as an aggressive left-handed batsman and an off-spinner, eager to bowl and learn. Essentially Ali has displaced Samit Patel.
It is possible to imagine England’s batsmen prevailing, especially if Eoin Morgan and Jos Buttler are on top of their games and Ravi Bopara finds that touch of magic when the match is still in the balance (he played quite sublimely in a match that was already lost against Australia in Hobart at the end of January).
It is trickier to envisage England having the depth of bowling required to prevail. International batsmen have never been so easily duped by Jade Dernbach’s variations as county cricketers are. There is no mystery among the spinners. So Broad will have his hands full in the field. He will have to lead the way with the ball himself and he might be well advised to give himself a few more bowling options than Giles and his selectors provided in the recent white-ball matches against Australia.
PHOTO: Ashley Giles will be interviewed for England’s head coach position immediately after the World T20 which follows the West Indies tour. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA
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http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/feb/22/england-west-indies-coach-ashley-giles
