Cricket: Caribbeans will be conspicuous by their absence in 2023 World Cup in India

Warning has been on the walls. Finally, the inevitable has happened.

World’s showpiece ODI cricket tournament – 50 overs a side –  to be played in India from October 5 to November 19 will be without Calypsos.

The West Indies will not be part of the ODI World Cup for the first time in the history of the tournament after being eliminated from the Qualifiers – a result that plunged country’s cricket to an unimaginable low, on Saturday.

When the nearly star studded Caribbeans arrived in Harare for the do-or-die Super Six contest, no one would have imagined that they would suffer an embarrassing seven-wicket loss to Scotland. West Indies, packed with some bona-fide T20 superstars,  could manage only  a modest 181 in 43.5 overs. And the Scots took up the challenge of knocking down the required total in 43.3 overs to notch up  a sensational win in  this format of cricket. In the process, they have shown the door to a team that had dominated this format of the game in its early years.

Change is the only thing that is permanent. And that is exactly what the Scots did on Saturday. Their impressive show had the limelight on  all-rounder Brandon McMullen, who first took three wickets, and then scored a patient 69 off 106 balls to steer his side to a famous victory. Such was the West Indies’ plight that the top score was a painstaking 45 off 79 balls by Jason Holder.

Another star performer for Scotland was Mathew Cross. His  74 not out of 107 balls anchored the chase perfectly. Once the Scots were at the batting crease, it became so apparent  that one team would win and it was not the West Indies day.

Scotland chased down the target in just 43.3 overs, ensuring that West Indies won’t compete in the ODI World Cup for the first time since the inception of the tournament in 1975.Incidentally, it was first victory for Scotland over West Indies.

It may be pertinent to recall that Clive Lloyd’s team had won the first two editions in 1975 and 1979 and played the 1983 final, where it was beaten by India.

Though West Indies has two more matches to play. Even if it wins both, it can reach up to four points while Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe already have six points in their three games.

Scotland with this win are on four points and would reckon that an upset can help them sneak into the tournament-proper.

It appears to be the final nail in the coffin for a cricket team that has been on a terminal decline for the past two decades. While they won two T20 World Cup titles in 2012 and 2016, the performance in two traditional formats—Tests and ODIs –  have spiralled southwards.

Ironically, West Indies was forced to play the qualifier before the 2019 World Cup also but eventually managed to finish in top two along with Afghanistan to save itself from embarrassment.

But a team that had Nicholas Pooran, a Rs 16 crore IPL recruit, Jason Holder, Kyle Mayers, Alzarri Joseph, Romario Shepherd, Akeal Hossein, all who were part of this edition’s IPL, in its ranks, this was least expected. The team really slumped at its first hurdle.

Perhaps the performance is symptomatic of times which is very different from the 1970s when some of the world class cricketers from Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, Antigua, Trinidad & Tobago came together and were the flag-bearers of ‘Black Caribbean Community’ which had been under oppression for the longest time. It was the time when the Caribbeans scripted cricket history, both in pace bowling and hard hitting.

So dominant was Caribbean cricket that a brilliant documentary ‘Fire in Babylon’  was made to showcase it. It managed to convey that  it wasn’t just flair, fun and frolic but also a responsibility towards community. It has been one sport that kept the commonwealth of Caribbean nations on the world’s competitive sports map for a long time.

It showed how the team came together after England captain Tony Greig commented before the 1976 series that he would make them ‘grovel’, a derogatory term used for ‘Black Community’ referring to slavery.

Michael Holding spit fire at the Oval and Viv Richards scored a near triple hundred.

Their brand of cricket helped them become world beaters in limited overs cricket, first 60 overs and then 50 overs as most of their top players played in county or league cricket in England.

But the time changes. The fire, too, starts extinguishing. The game has changed. The T20 concept has seen the emergence of highly-skilled T20 mercenaries or Gun for Hire as one can refer to them, who haven’t exactly been bothered about the national cricket team’s benefit. One of the reasons ascribed to the downfall of the Windies cricket has been the flawed concept of multiple nations, playing under one flag in the present day age.

Is it the end of road for Windies cricket, especially in the ODI format? Only time will tell.

All eyes now on the 2023 World Cup in India to be played over 10 venues, including Ahmedabad and Dharamsala.