As a cricket fan this is something that no fan wants to write or even think about but it is the reality and the fact that the first great international team in the world and a team that won the first 2 World Cups and finished runners up in the 3rd is looking like they will not quality for the World Cup is staggering. The West Indies team has not been performing to their potential for quite some time.
So, let’s talk about the decline of West Indies cricket
The Downfall of West Indies Cricket is staggering
West Indies Cricket in the 1970s and 1980s was a team filled with the biggest and the best Superstars of world cricket and there was no team in the world that could compete against them. They had the likes of Gary Sobers, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards in their batting and they had Malcolm Marshall, Courteney Walsh, Michael Holding in their bowling and they would not any other team to be near them and it took a remarkable effort by the Indian team to beat them and to win the 1983 World Cup. In 1975 and 1979, the West Indies dominated world cricket and they were great in all formats of the sport.
Then came the 1990s and West Indies cricket had a new hero and his name was Brian Lara and he was among the Top 3 batters in the world at his time and he helped West Indies Cricket to be a good team and although they did not win a World Cup after 1979, they were present at each world cup and there were the likes of Shivnaraine Chanderpaul, Fidel Edwards who were with Brian Lara and West Indies was a good test team. However everything changed after Brian Lara took retirement and after that West Indies started going downhill as they were nowhere to be seen in the 2003 World Cup or the 2007 World Cup which was at their home and they have played bad ODI Cricket since then.
The T20I format was introduced in 2005 and this was the format that the West Indies team saw that they could play their best cricket in and they found the likes of Chris Gayle, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Darren Sammy, Marlon Samuels etc and they won their first World Cup in 2012 and then they went on to become the only team to win the World Cup for the second time in 2016. After that in the 2021 and the 2022 Editions they were not even competitive because their players are more interested in playing franchise cricket rather than for West Indies. And in the Test format they have a good Team now but they are not able to win matches on a regular basis. Players like Kyle Meyers, Shai Hope and bowlers like Fidel Edwards, Ravi Rampaul can revive test cricket but the white ball cricket for West Indies looks to be in its worst phase.
