There is India against the West Indies and there is England against Australia. Famously known as The Ashes. It is no brainer as to which one is the more popular series. There cannot be a contrasting series than these. In the future, respective boards will have to ensure that they must not schedule mismatched series while The Ashes is underway. The difference is quite stark and embarrassing. This is a tale of two contrasting series.
Let me begin with The Ashes
3 Tests done. All of them were closely fought. The first and the third almost went down to the wire. There were multiple excellent performances. Khawaja’s runs, Smith’s hundred, Cummins’s and Starc’s high-quality bowling, Wood’s ferocious pace and last but not least, Ben Stokes’s aggressive strokeplay. Thrills and edge-of-the-seat entertainment were not in short supply in the series. It has been a series where even a neutral will find thrilling.
If the on-field action was riveting, the on-field controversies too never ceased to exist. The Alex Carey-Cummins-Bairstow moment will be spoken about for a very longtime. Bairstow is going to hold onto the view that what happened was against the spirit of the game, notwithstanding the same attempts that he may have made earlier. Carey and Cummins will always maintain that it was under the laws of the game. Fans on both the sides will forever be split. For someone like Ashwin, who does not give much credence to the spirit of the game debate, this was a chance well taken by Carey. Cummins and Carey will, atleast till the end of this series, be vilified and booed wherever they go.
Speaking of which, the behaviour of the crowd in this series has been downright abusive. Khawaja has expressed in no uncertain terms that it has been rude.
“Personally, if I am coming to the cricket and watching the cricket, I wouldn’t want my kids to be around that,” Khawaja said ahead of the Old Trafford Test. “If I saw that I would 100 percent make a complaint or just leave. I think some of the stuff can be pretty poor. Over at Edgbaston they were calling Travis Head a c… you know what. I’m like I can’t believe you can actually say that in a public domain anywhere.”
Now the other series
One will be hard-pressed to even allocate time to a series that most of the world does not realise is underway. India vs West Indies over the last 20 years, always had the air of the conqueror against the minnows. West Indies lost their way with the retirement of their last recognised bonafide great in Brian Lara. Since then, they have never really recovered. T20 cricket took over and in their need to earn as much as possible before their playing career is finished, have gone onto represent in multiple global leagues across the world.
The West Indian players are sometimes called mercilessly as mercenaries. This is harsh to the extreme because players have limited amount of shelf-life. They have to earn money for the rest of their lives. They do not know anything else apart from playing the game.
West Indian cricketers are not exceptionally paid like their Indian or English or Aussie or even South African counterparts.
Nonetheless, they are still expected to show some fight against a side for whom, the days when they feared the famous West Indian fast bowlers have long gone by.
What happened to pace and bounce?
West Indian pitches are renowned for the pace and bounce that they carry. Great, tall and ferocious fast bowlers, some with quick arm rotation, some with steep bounce, some with a physical presence that would shame the WWF fighters and a Whispering Death bowler, instilled a sense of fear in every batsman. The same pitches, now, have become an antithesis. For well over 20 years, West Indian captains never thought beyond 4 fast bowlers but are now forced to field a spinner or in the case of the last Test, multiple spinners. This was unheard of in the hallowed turf of the Caribbean.
The pitch actually helped the opposition instead of your own team. Perhaps, this was a masterstroke on the part of the West Indian board. You see, if you prepare a pitch that will favour the visiting spinners, they will be able to win and will be they will be more than happy to tour the West Indies again and thereby the board will receive enormous wealth. Now, this is just a conspiracy theory.
The point is that, if West Indies are not the least bit competitive, it will only set them back by several decades. It may even result in the likely scenario in the distant future of the West Indies itself being demolished and the regional countries competing individually. There was a young batsman who made his debut and went onto score a hundred, a big one at that, on his debut. There was an offspinner who took his career-best figures in the West Indies. Does any of that count? Afterall, wasn’t this along the expected lines? Especially for Ashwin.
Wrapping up a tale of two contrasting series
West Indies and England rely to some extent on Indian viewership. More so, West Indies. Tests in the Caribbean are disadvantaged to begin with. It runs late into the night and the Indians will not be willing to stay awake and watch a series that will probably be boring. Time is too short this year and nothing can be done about it. In the following years, either the team must become competitive or must not schedule any series when an interesting series takes place in England.