When did the 'great' West Indies team(s) stop being great?

[Prince EWS]

very weak

Like your face/posts.

To be clear I'm not trolling or being jovial, I think you have a very weak jawline and even weaker posts.

 

[Slifer]

Saying you're trolling when you're trolling is very weak. Lay your bait like a man.

Ok. Next time. I promise ??

 

[Fuller Pilch]

How about we play this fun little game, use peak WI from the 80s and have them replace the WI in the series they played in the 90s:

Nz '95 (a) and 96: still wins for the WI by an even wider margin.

Ind '94 (a) and '97 : WI drew in India in '94 with half their team missing, therefore a full strength 80s team would likely win. '97 yeah 80s WI are easily winning that.

Pak: '90 (a), '93, '97 (a): '90 was at the end of the WI dynasty and they drew. That 90 Pakistan attack had qadir, mustaq, pre injury Waqar and wasim and imran occasionally; an exceptional attack. Wi had no Viv yet they drew. Peak WI would likely do the same. Ditto to the away series in '97. '93 in the wi Pakistan were brushed aside so there you go.

RSA '98 (a): no way the WI from the 80s get swept, that's laughable. Wi lost mostly because their batting was woeful. The team of the 80s seeing that RSA has no decent spinner in site would likely do much much better. Probably mirror how Australia faired in Rsa and either edge by one test or draw the series.

SL: '97: wider margin of victory by the WI. Wi only played a one off test away in the 90s and that ended in a draw.

Eng: '90, '91 (a), 94, '95 (a), '98: WI win every last one of those series by at least two tests. As a matter of fact, WI don't lose a single test at home.

Aus: '91, 93 (a), 95, 97 (a), '99: WI win in 91 and 93 by wider margins. They edge the 95 series at home. Ditto the series in 97 in Australia. '99 in the Caribbean, yeah another WI win.

About the only chances peak WI of the 80s have at a loss would probably be away to Pakistan in 97. That's it. Don't see them losing any of the series of we swap then out for their 90s counterparts. Note we said peak WI ie the team comprising:

Greenidge
Haynes
Richardson
Viv
Gomes
Lloyd*
Dujon+
Marshall
Holding
Garner
Walsh

They still would've lost to NZ in 1999 because peak WI poor in NZ conditions and that was a good NZ side in NZ conditions Cairns bowled like Hadlee, and the batsmen flourished. The Windies have often struggled with our slow pitches as even Sobers did poorly here. That side above is a mixture of the teams which lost in 79/80 and drew in 86/87. NZ were terrible in 94/95 but would've beaten that side in 99/2000.

 

[HookShot]

"West Indies even at their peak would have got devastated by yop class spin bowler like Murali or Warne."

"80s simple did not have good spinners. 90s produced Kumble, Warne, Murali, Mushtaq, Saqlain."

"Pakistan Saqlain instead of Qadir (or playing both) would have demolished West Indies"

This is what I'm responding to:

A. That there were no good spinners during the WI reign. Which is false since wi played Qasim chandra, Underwood, mallet, Prassana etc.
B. That WI would've been demolished, utter bs.

And here are Bob Holland and the great Murray Bennett demolishing peak West Indies in 1985. If only we played them more often….

 

[HookShot]

I could watch this Murray Bennett arm-ball against Viv all day…

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Even Allan Border bowled the hacks out in one Test. Took about a quarter of his Test wickets in one match.

 

[HookShot]

Even Allan Border bowled the hacks out in one Test. Took about a quarter of his Test wickets in one match.

Which begs the question, why didn’t teams play some decent orthodox left-armers against the West Indies during the 80s?

Here we have Border beating Viv with a ball that simply ‘straightens down the line’…

 

[Migara]

And here are Bob Holland and the great Murray Bennett demolishing peak West Indies in 1985. If only we played them more often….

The technique of the West Indian batsmen show they are pretty vulnerable defending the spinners. They may have been great attacking them, but ATG spinners cannot be played that way. Now this is against a spinner who doesn't bowl a googly, still batsmen are not picking slider from the leg spinner even on the back foot. The same mistakes was made by Richardson, Haynes, Simmons and Arthurton few years later in 1993 test in SL. So it looks like the problems with defensive play handed over the generations of batsmen in WI, with no improvement even till today.

 

[Migara]

I could watch this Murray Bennett arm-ball against Viv all day…

Nice

 

[Prince EWS]

This is seriously one of the dumbest arguments ever presented on CW.

"Batsmen who developed techniques to play the better bowlers of the time might not have been as well equipped to deal with the better bowlers of some other time."

Well, duh.

It actually infuriates me to read this absolutely narrow thinking in terms of how view the history of cricket. Get outta here.

 

[Teja.]

WI did not lose a single test series from 1979 to 1995. A date before 1995 for this question is bonkers.

 

[The Sean]

How about we play this fun little game, use peak WI from the 80s and have them replace the WI in the series they played in the 90s:

Nz '95 (a) and 96: still wins for the WI by an even wider margin.

Ind '94 (a) and '97 : WI drew in India in '94 with half their team missing, therefore a full strength 80s team would likely win. '97 yeah 80s WI are easily winning that.

Pak: '90 (a), '93, '97 (a): '90 was at the end of the WI dynasty and they drew. That 90 Pakistan attack had qadir, mustaq, pre injury Waqar and wasim and imran occasionally; an exceptional attack. Wi had no Viv yet they drew. Peak WI would likely do the same. Ditto to the away series in '97. '93 in the wi Pakistan were brushed aside so there you go.

RSA '98 (a): no way the WI from the 80s get swept, that's laughable. Wi lost mostly because their batting was woeful. The team of the 80s seeing that RSA has no decent spinner in site would likely do much much better. Probably mirror how Australia faired in Rsa and either edge by one test or draw the series.

SL: '97: wider margin of victory by the WI. Wi only played a one off test away in the 90s and that ended in a draw.

Eng: '90, '91 (a), 94, '95 (a), '98: WI win every last one of those series by at least two tests. As a matter of fact, WI don't lose a single test at home.

Aus: '91, 93 (a), 95, 97 (a), '99: WI win in 91 and 93 by wider margins. They edge the 95 series at home. Ditto the series in 97 in Australia. '99 in the Caribbean, yeah another WI win.

About the only chances peak WI of the 80s have at a loss would probably be away to Pakistan in 97. That's it. Don't see them losing any of the series of we swap then out for their 90s counterparts. Note we said peak WI ie the team comprising:

Greenidge
Haynes
Richardson
Viv
Gomes
Lloyd*
Dujon+
Marshall
Holding
Garner
Walsh

I feel like a lot of teams' results would improve if you got to replace them with the best side that country had ever fielded.

 

[Prince EWS]

I feel like a lot of teams' results would improve if you got to replace them with the best side that country had ever fielded.

To be fair Migara seemed to be making a rather silly suggestion that they kind of wouldn't because muh spinners. It was a fair retort.

 

[subshakerz]

Under Clive Lloyd, the WI team had a very good record against spin generally. You had Lloyd and Kalicharran who were excellent players of spin and peak Viv who could destroy any attack.

They won the series in India in 74 against the spin quartet and that was before the WI had hit full gear. They didnt have problems with Underwood in England in 76. And then between 80-83 they played 10 tests in India-Pakistan and didn't lose a single test, which you would expect if they had a weakness to spin. The only outlier was losing to Robert Holland in 85 but that may have been more due to Sydney pitch and was a dead rubber test anyways.

It makes sense that once LLoyd and Kali were out of the team and Viv on the decline that WI lost more tests to spin 86 onwards.

 

[Slifer]

The technique of the West Indian batsmen show they are pretty vulnerable defending the spinners. They may have been great attacking them, but ATG spinners cannot be played that way. Now this is against a spinner who doesn't bowl a googly, still batsmen are not picking slider from the leg spinner even on the back foot. The same mistakes was made by Richardson, Haynes, Simmons and Arthurton few years later in 1993 test in SL. So it looks like the problems with defensive play handed over the generations of batsmen in WI, with no improvement even till today.

Bro ramnaresh sarwan averaged 50 odd home and away vs Murali in back to back series. Players adapt. Faced with a spinner like murali I'd expect the WI players to have issues but eventually find their way. Good grief.

 

[Slifer]

Which begs the question, why didn’t teams play some decent orthodox left-armers against the West Indies during the 80s?

Here we have Border beating Viv with a ball that simply ‘straightens down the line’…

Umm Iqbal Qasim, Derek Underwood and Bedi in the 70s. Still made no difference to the results.

 

[Slifer]

And here are Bob Holland and the great Murray Bennett demolishing peak West Indies in 1985. If only we played them more often….

The 5th test of a series the WI essentially won 4-1. You also might pay attention to the fact that bennett and Holland played earlier in that series, in live tests and did zilch.

 

[Slifer]

They still would've lost to NZ in 1999 because peak WI poor in NZ conditions and that was a good NZ side in NZ conditions Cairns bowled like Hadlee, and the batsmen flourished. The Windies have often struggled with our slow pitches as even Sobers did poorly here. That side above is a mixture of the teams which lost in 79/80 and drew in 86/87. NZ were terrible in 94/95 but would've beaten that side in 99/2000.

Umm no. With no hadlee in site I'd back w to win in 1999. Plus the series they lost in 1980 was lost by one wicket. It wasn't as if nz dominated or anything. Further that 1980 series team didn't have sir Malcolm or Viv. The 87 series holding and Garner retired half way through and Malcom has injured.

 

[pardus]

WI did not lose a single test series from 1979 to 1995. A date before 1995 for this question is bonkers.

Rot set in a few years earlier, it came into effect as a series loss in 1995.
But yes, the fact that the WI team lost just 1 Test series all the way from 1976 till 1995 (almost 2 decades) is an astonishing record.

On a different note (not on this WI being weak against spin thing), Pakistan always gave that dominant WI team a run for their money, even throughout their dominant era. Every series between them was a dogfight.

Pak should have won that series in 1988 when, in the final test match at Barbados, WI (trailing 0-1 in the series) were tottering at 207-8 managed to score 268 to win. Quite a few close umpiring decisions went against Pak in that final WI innings.

That WI batting, even in their heyday, did struggle a lot against Pak bowling.
From 1979 till 1992 (or in 4 consecutive Test series), WI never reached an innings total of 400 runs against Pak.
In fact, they rarely even reached 300 runs in an innings against Pak (only 2 times in 23 innings did they make more than 300 runs in an innings against Pak)

 

[RossTaylorsBox]

This is seriously one of the dumbest arguments ever presented on CW.

"Batsmen who developed techniques to play the better bowlers of the time might not have been as well equipped to deal with the better bowlers of some other time."

Well, duh.

It actually infuriates me to read this absolutely narrow thinking in terms of how view the history of cricket. Get outta here.