How to dismantle a dynasty

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

EVEN rebel cricketers turned drug addicts have standards. David Murray, for instance, started smoking dagga when he was short enough for the flaps of his wicketkeeping pads to slap against his ribs.

After his career was cut short by a ban for touring apartheid SA with a rebel West Indies side, he moved on to cocaine and now, at 64, lives an uncertain life in the backstreets of Bridgetown, Barbados.

Murray admits lighting a spliff or two before and after play. Did he also puff, perchance, during lunch and tea?

“Never,” he likes to say with staged alarm. “You can’t do that!”

You also cannot neglect the talent the cricketing gods give you - whether you are one player or an entire region.

West Indies has become that region. After Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott transformed them from the Saartjie Baartman of cricket into a team that demanded to be taken seriously. Then Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft turned them into a side that were as close to unbeatable as the game has yet seen.

The four pacemen of the apocalypse had giants like Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd to help them take West Indies to the very top. But, mostly, it was about the quicks: usually unorthodox, never inelegant, almost always in command.

They were followed by more giants - Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, and a little left-hander Robin Peterson will never forget.

“I’m not that immature kid anymore; I’m a different person compared to then,” Peterson said this week of being smashed for 28 runs - then an unwanted record, now jointly held with England’s James Anderson - by Brian Lara in the Wanderers test of December, 2003.

Peterson is the only member of that SA XI who is in the squad for the series that starts at Centurion on Wednesday. Shivnarine Chanderpaul is the only survivor from the Windies team - the injured Chris Gayle would have been another.

That Peterson, blessed with more temperament and tenacity than sheer talent, should last as long as the pre-eminent West Indian batsmen of the age says much.

Peterson has been given the opportunity and space to build his game, both in and away from the international arena, and to become a confident, respected presence in SA’s team. He is 35, but by any other measure he is young man in no hurry.

Chanderpaul is 40. Never the most entertaining of batsmen but among the most difficult to dismiss, he has taken to playing like a death row prisoner waiting for the telephone to ring with a last-minute reprieve. Were he to retire West Indies’ batting would implode exponentially.

Unless, of course, Gayle props it up. But, for that to happen, Gayle would have to be between injuries for a significant stretch.

As the world’s leading T20 mercenary, when he does turn out for West Indies, he seems to be doing them a favour. This year, Gayle has played four tests, three one-day internationals, nine T20 internationals - and 28 T20s for franchises in India, the Caribbean and SA.

What the hell happened to West Indies? And what lessons should SA take from the destruction of their dynasty?

“Their board don’t seem to tell the players the truth about what’s going on; why things are not going well,” former SA fast bowler Makhaya Ntini said.

“If the players aren’t being informed about things that affect them, how can they make decisions properly? The board and the players don’t trust each other. They need a better relationship.”

The marriage was on the rocks again in October, when the Windies abandoned their tour to India because of a pay dispute.

Which prompted a pertinent question from Ntini: “If the players knew how much money they would cost the game in their country if they did that, would they still have done it?”

As David Murray might have told them, you can’t do that.