Tony Becca, Contributing Editor
THE INDIAN cricketers arrived in Jamaica on Friday for their ninth tour of the West Indies and cricket fans around the region are looking forward to some top-class cricket and an exciting contest.
Ever since the West Indies walked on to the field at Lord's in June 1928 for their first Test match, their arch enemies have been England and Australia. Over the years, however, West Indies-India contests have been something special - and it has been something special for one simple reason.
Because of the West Indies, because of the presence of bowlers like Roy Gilchrist, Wes Hall, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Patrick Patterson, Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose, and because of India, bowlers like Subhash Gupte, Vinoo Mankad, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Srini-vasaraghavan Venkatarag-havan, Bishen Bedi and Erapally Prasanna, the contests have been highlighted by express fast bowling and mesmerising spin bowling.
Cricket, however, is a batsman's game. Cricket fans love to watch great batsmen on the go and the reason, the real reason why West Indies-India contests have something special has been because of the presence of batsmen like Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott, Gary Sobers and Rohan Kanhai, Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Alvin Kallicharran and Richie Richardson on one side. Then Vijay Hazare, Polly Umrigar, Vijay Manjrekar, Pankaj Roy, Sunil Gavaskar, Gundappa Vishwanath, Mohinder Armanath and Navrot Singh Sidhu on the other.
NATURAL STROKE PLAYERS
As prolific batsmen, they were numbered among the best of their time with a few of them rated among the best of all time. On top of that, however, they were natural stroke players almost every one of them.
Most of them, the majority of them, loved to stroke the ball, to hit the ball, and as they did at Sabina Park back in 1953 during India's first tour to the West Indies when Worrell, Weekes and Walcott, Umrigar, Roy and Manjrekar all scored centuries, they did so with a relish - the West Indians, sometimes, with audacious strokes, the Indians, most times, with delicate, magical strokes.
This time around, the West Indies attack will lack the fire of days gone by and despite the presence of their two most recent exponents of the art, India's attack, as far as spin is concerned, will not be the same as it used to be - certainly not as it was at Sabina Park in 1971 when Prasanna, Venkataraghavan and Bedi embarrassed the West Indies and forced them to follow-on.
With batsmen like Brian Lara, Chris Gayle, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan in the West Indies team, however, with Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwaq, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammed Kaif in India's line-up and Sachin Tendulkar likely to join them, there are batsmen on both sides who could make this series something special - something to remember.
The West Indies versus India still falls short of the West Indies versus England and the West Indies versus Australia.
There is something about the Indians that West Indians love, however, and remembering 1953 and Jayasinghrao Ghoparde, Chandrasekhar Gadkari and Dattajirao Gaekwad, remembering Gupte and Mankad, Venkat, Bedi, Prasanna and Chandra-sekhar, it may well be, apart from the mystic of their turbans, their brilliance in the field and their quality spin bowling.
Chances are, however, it is their batting - the elegant, wristy strokeplay of their batsmen, that excites West Indians - and with no Gilchrist, no Hall, no Roberts, no Holding, no Marshall, no Patterson, no Ambrose and no Walsh in the Windies line-up, with only Fidel Edwards of real pace to deal with, Sehwaq, Dravid and company may be chalking their cues and getting ready to shine as bright and to bat as well as Gavaskar and Dilip Sardesai did in during their victorious tour of 1971.
