Batting minus scoring

Bystanders don't win marathons. So why, at this early stage of the longest-ever regional first-class campaign, are the West Indies batsmen insisting on a painfully pedestrian pace of scoring at the domestic level?

While it is understandable and expected that the management of the Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) squad will be frustrated by the inclement weather that has interrupted all three matches so far, to say nothing of their exasperation at the inefficiency of the ground staff and inadequacy of covers that have only compounded the problem, this consistent strokelessness as practised by the top order actually conspires against any effort to make up for lost time.

An unfair exaggeration? How else do you explain a scoring rate of 2.61 per over in the five innings (it's even worse - 2.46 - if you look at the first innings only) of the national side up to and including the first innings over the weekend at Guaracara Park? It's not as if the bowling attacks of Barbados, defending champions Jamaica, and the Windward Islands are particularly outstanding. In fact like almost every other aspect of regional cricket, they are quite ordinary.

Of course run-rates in the traditional version are not nearly as important as in the limited-over hybrids. Still it is the trademark of a confident and successful outfit to play positively. Not recklessly, or even adventurously, but positively. It is about looking for every opportunity to keep the scoreboard ticking over in a manner that is not restricted to the very occasional big lash to the boundary.

Take last Friday's play in Pointe-a-Pierre as an example. On a bland surface and facing unthreatening bowlers, the home team's first 103 runs came off 262 deliveries. Think about it - more than 43 overs to get to three figures. More than that, 54 of those runs were acquired off just 12 balls (nine fours and three sixes), so the remaining 49 runs occupied 250 deliveries or the equivalent of 41.4 overs.

Whether or not this is a legacy of the preoccupation with the shorter forms of the game, the inescapable conclusion from the evidence of the first three weekends of the season is that the art of batsmanship is being stripped down to the bare bones of an all-or-nothing sort of attitude. It's about batsmen being content with offering a succession of defensive prods until the opportunity comes along to smash a loose ball for four or six, or patience runs out and they decide to go for the big one regardless of the merit of the delivery.

This is not a call for batsmen to take unnecessary risks in the quest to pick up the pace, but merely to return to the time-honoured, though understated, virtues of building an innings and a partnership. Nothing infuriates a bowler more than a succession of singles because it serves the dual purpose of frustrating his efforts at concentrating on a particular batsman while also moving the score along at a fair rate.

By the way referring to this practice as "rotating the strike" is really a misnomer, for it implies that more than two batsmen are at the crease? If we want to be grammatically correct about it, the term should be "alternating the strike," which clarifies that it is between one or the other, and not several as in a "rotation."

It's like talking about putting your "best" foot forward when every English language student would or should know that, since a human being has only two feet, it is not the superlative but the comparative term "better" that has to be used.

Anyway those were two minor points that have no bearing whatsoever on the substance of the game. In contrast the lack of purposeful, thinking batsmanship can eventually prove very costly in the long run, even if it doesn't appear to be such a big deal against a team as depressingly inept as the Windwards.

It is part of the complete development of the player to continually seek to improve every aspect of his or her game, from the fundamentals of batting, bowling, fielding and catching to the refinement of those seemingly minor aspects that fall under the heading of "outcricket', and include such finer points as aggressive running between the wickets and eliminating wild returns that drive the wicketkeeper in all directions away from the stumps, to name just two.

No one who really aspires to be the very best should ever be satisfied with just doing enough to get by. An emphatic victory does not of itself exonerate shortcomings in the course of a match, especially as the failure to deal with those problem areas could come back to haunt you at the worst possible time.

It is the attention to detail and the relentless pursuit of excellence that separates the good from the great, and while no one should go anywhere near to suggesting that the T&T squads responsible for the past five years of success are on the road to greatness, their journey towards being the best and most consistent regional side in these deeply depressing times in West Indies cricket would be boosted considerably by a commitment to play positively.

In a modern self-serving environment where the end increasingly justifies the means, it is still worth noting that greatness is measured not only by winning much more than losing, but on how you play the game.