The West Indies cricket team are in a dire situation at the moment, but let us not forget that they had one of the greatest sides ever assembled once upon a time. What the West Indies achieved, particularly in test cricket, in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s beggared belief at times, and in the World Cup, no less success came their way.
When I first took an interest in cricket, immediately I became obsessed with the history of the game and very quickly my attention was focused, along with Don Bradman and various other greats, on West Indies cricket in general. Few sports have the history this game of leather and willow boasts; few sports have seen men like Garry Sobers and quartets like Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner and Andy Roberts—and the various other combinations of fast bowlers the West Indies used in that era—play as if it were too easy for them.
When the first ever Cricket World Cup was hosted in England in 1975, the West Indies were just beginning their period of dominance. Before then, they had been rather inconsistent: victorious test series, such as the 3-1 away win over England in 1966, where Garry Sobers scored 722 runs and took 20 wickets, were followed by defeat and embarrassment. Between the win in England in 1966 and the 2-0 win in the same country in 1973, the West Indies lost to England, Australia (on multiple occasions) and India, as well as drawing two series with New Zealand in that time.
However, in 1974, when Clive Lloyd took over the captaincy, fortunes began to change. Before the World Cup in 1975, the bespectacled batsman led his side to a 2-0 win over India in the subcontinent, where the captain himself scored 242 not out in the final test. They carried their form through the One Day tournament, crowned champions of the world on the 21st June, having beaten Australia in the final.
The West Indians cruised through the group stages without losing a match. Two comfortable wins against Sri Lanka and Australia, where the former were bowled out for 86, and the latter saw their total chased down with fourteen overs to spare—the most notable performances were Bernard Julien’s 4-20 against Sri Lanka and Alvin Kallicharran’s 78 off 83 balls against Australia—sandwiched a tense, one wicket victory over Pakistan with two balls to spare; Clive Lloyd’s 53 off 58 and Deryck Murray’s match-winning 61 not out made them the heroes. New Zealand were seen off with twenty overs to spare in the semi-final, thanks to another staggering bowling performance (4-27) from Julien and knock of 72 from Kallicharran, but the final was a much more tense affair.
The boys from the Caribbean, batting first, put on a very strong 291 off their 60 overs, Clive Lloyd scoring a magnificent 102 off 85 to save the innings from 50-3. However, their Aussie counterparts put up a fight, and batted aggressively to keep within range of the West Indies’s score. However, their aggression was their downfall, as five batsmen were run out trying to run when the only feasible result would be a dismissal. Keith Boyce took 4-50 off his twelve overs, and man of the match Clive Lloyd took the other wicket. The West Indies won by seventeen runs, and were the first ever champions of the world.
In 1979, the defending champions were even stronger. Though the controversy of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket still loomed, the West Indian players who had competed in said tournament were allowed by the WICB to represent their country in the World Cup. This proved to be the right decision, as they won the tournament yet again.
In their first match against India, they won comfortably, as they bowled out the Indians for 190, largely thanks to Michael Holding’s 4-33, and chased their total down in devastating fashion, courtesy of a glorious century from opener Gordon Greenidge. Their second match, against Sri Lanka, was a washout, and they dealt with New Zealand thanks to a 65 from Greenidge, a 73 from Lloyd, and none of their five bowlers—Roberts, Holding, Colin Croft, Joel Garner and Collis King—straying over the four runs per over mark.
In the semi-final, Pakistan were beaten relatively comfortably, after fine knocks from Greenidge once again, this time for 73, and Desmond Haynes, for 65, and three wickets apiece for Colin Croft and Viv Richards, who’d scored a respectable 42 earlier on.
The final came and England were dispatched pretty easily. After a slow start, the West Indies built from 55-3 to 286-9 all out, due in no small part to Viv Richards’s mesmerising 138 and Collis King’s supporting 86 off just 66 deliveries. All was rosy in the West Indies garden.
When the next World Cup came in 1983, the West Indies were at the peak of their powers. In fact, between the 1979-80 tour of New Zealand and the World Cup Final of 1983, they had lost just three matches, one of which had been against their opponents in the final, India, earlier on in the tournament. However, they could not get their ownback on the Indians: they were bowled out for 140, chasing 183, and failed to win three consecutive World Cups.
Since that World Cup, strong showings from the West Indies have been few and far between at that tournament. A solitary semi-final is the best they have done since 1983, in 1996, where they lost agonisingly by five runs to Australia, and in that same tournament they were embarrassed by 76 runs by Kenya; something which sums up the inconsistency of the West Indies in the past few decades.
Success has been present in other One Day tournaments: a win against all odds in the Champions Trophy in 2004, and a brilliant Twenty20 World Cup win in 2012 have restored some respect, but it seems that West Indies cricket is very much falling to pieces at the moment. Certainly, Twenty20 cricket is where any success will be had in the foreseeable future, and it would be a shock of seismic proportions if they were to win the upcoming edition of the World Cup.
The West Indies, for all their wonderful players over the years, have not won the World Cup since 1979. The way things are going at the moment, they will have to wait a while yet to repeat that feat.
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