da apostaganha： West Indies cricket teams have been faced with desperate situations inthe past few years and today is no exception
Haydn Gill09-May-2001West Indies cricket teams have been faced with desperate situations inthe past few years and today is no exception.Down 1-3 in the seven-match Cable & Wireless One-Day Internationalseries against South Africa, they go to Kensington Oval this morningin a must-win situation to keep alive their hopes of winning thetrophy.We need to get desperate from this game, but it shouldn’t have come tothis stage, captain Carl Hooper said yesterday after a morningpractice session that attracted a large crowd at Queen’s Park.We should have been desperate a long time ago to pull even with theseguys.Hooper and the West Indies are still upbeat about their chances.But against the background of three successive, comprehensive defeats,there are others who have a dim view.A general worker at Kensington said yesterday it might be easier forLord Nelson or Bussa to wuk-up than for the West Indies to win amatch.He might be among a small group, but the truth is that in the lastthree encounters, the West Indies were hardly competitive.And Hooper knows it too.A couple of games ago I was trying to emphasise that I was a bitconcerned about the bowling, he said.The batting is now a problem as well.We’ve played four One-Day games so far and our highest score is 220.That is a bit worrying given the fact that sometimes we have played asmany as eight batters.We must bat and bat properly. Regardless of if we bat first or last,we must be able to give the bowlers a score that they can work with.Hooper himself is peeved he has not been able to convert his promisingstarts into significant contributions. In every match, he looked theclass batsman we know he is, but returns of 43, 48, 29 and 46 haveunderstandably frustrated his followers.Obviously I am disappointed with the 40s. I’m not making any excuses,he said.The times when I have got out, they have been 10, 12, 15 overs left. Icould have gone on to get, if not a hundred, 70s, 80s, 90s.After two defeats by eight wickets and another by 132 runs, thebiggest margin of victory for the South Africans in 22 One-DayInternationals against the West Indies, Mike Findlay and fellowselectors have made adjustments to the 14-man squad that was utilisedfor the first four matches.There is a recall for opening batsman Daren Ganga, whose record in theshorter form of the game hardly suggests encouragement.The 21-year-old Trinidadian, who takes Ricardo Powell’s place at thetop of the innings, averages seven in as many matches. His techniqueand temperament, however, are as good as anyone else’s in theCaribbean.Ganga had two difficult tours South Africa and Australia and he hasbeen given the opportunity here in the Caribbean in conditions that heis familiar with, Hooper said.The second and final change in the squad is perhaps the mostinteresting.The inclusion of leg-spinner Dinanath Ramnarine ahead of left-armerNeil McGarrell, could prove decisive in the middle of the innings.There is a possibility that Ramnarine may try to bowl outside the legstump as he did so effectively in the Antigua Test, but it could be abit of a risk in the One-Day game.Ramnarine has got a part to play. We’ve been struggling to takewickets in the middle overs, Hooper said. He’s been brought into thesquad so he can play that role and pose a bit more variation and punchto the attack.In the first four matches, South Africa were able to launch theirinnings with calculated aggression which has caused the West Indiesmajor problems in containing them in the first 15 overs.In successive matches, by the time the field restrictions were eased,South Africa had raced to 67, 70, 88 and 74, and in each match theWest Indies took just one wicket in that period.Herschelle Gibbs, in particular, was very successful in charging thefast bowlers, but Hooper said there wasn’t a likelihood a spinnerwould be given the new ball to counter the problem.A spinner has been introduced before the 15 overs and hasn’t provedthat effective, the West Indies captain said.Opening with a spinner with the new ball is a big ask. Even though Ihave been successful in bowling in the middle stages of the game, Idon’t think it is something that we want to do.