Cricket Without A Cause

Martin Chandler | 9:21am GMT 09 November 2025

Published: 2017
Pages: 219
Author: Beckles, Hilary
Publisher: Ian Randle Publishers
Rating: 4 stars

During my childhood one cricketer stood out above all others, Garry Sobers, and if I am just too young to recall the days when he led a West Indies side entitled to consider itself the best in the world I do remember being spellbound by his genius as both batsman and left arm swing bowler.

Soon after Sobers retired the men in the maroon caps could once more say they were the best in the world, and would do so for almost 20 years. None were quite so unsuccessful against them as England, there being a hiatus of almost 16 years between victories by the team led by Mike Denness in 1973/74, and that by Graham Gooch’s side in 1989/90.

West Indian cricket’s dominance ended five years later. The fall from the pinnacle coincided with Australia’s rise to the top, but the decline in the Caribbean did not stop and by the time this book appeared, in 2017, West Indies Test cricket was in the doldrums. Why did the fall happen so quickly, and why has there been no significant improvement have been questions that have exercised my mind for years.

There have been many explanations put forward by a variety of people, some much better qualified to express a view than others, but before reading this one I had never come across anything that contained a convincing explanation of what has gone wrong.

Which makes it a little frustrating to say the least that this one slipped under my radar for so long, as Hilary Beckles has answered all my questions and, by not mentioning it at all, confirmed that the one idea that I had always struggled with, that sports other than cricket dominate the modern Caribbean mindset, is not a significant factor.

Beckles begins with a short introduction, and early on lists ten factors that have been at work. They are interrelated but the major issue that I had not properly appreciated was the impact of the problems faced by all of the economies of the various nations that contribute players to West Indies cricket.

Inter nation rivalries we have, of course, always known about and some of the inevitable organisational problems must stem from that. But there have also been issues between the Board and the players’ union which I realise now I was aware of, but had not previously fully appreciated the significance of.

The problem that West Indies have suffered from more than other nations however is clearly the growth of and now proliferation of the game’s shortest formats and the desire of players to specialise in that to the exclusion of Test cricket. The years that have passed since Cricket Without A Cause was written have served only to underline the fact that increasing numbers of cricketers are simply not now available for any red ball cricket, or alternatively not enough of it to enable them to play the classic version of the game very well.

There have been own goals along the way as well. I had quite forgotten the debacle in South Africa in 1998, and the players’ ‘strikes’ in India and at home against Bangladesh. None of those episodes have done anything other than harm West Indies cricket and, as he never fails to do, Beckles does not pull any punches in telling the stories.

Much the same can be said of the chapters that look primarily at specific individuals, and Brian Lara, Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Dinesh Ramdin and Jason Holder all come under the spotlight.

But Cricket Without a Cause is not all doom and gloom, Beckles titling one of the closing chapters Preparing for the Fourth Rising. As all who followed the recent non-contest against India will attest to that one has not yet appeared on the horizon, but I still think it might. West Indies batting is currently lamentably weak but, harking back to the beginning of the book and the first of Beckles’ ten factors, Natural Law: Rise and Fall, surely West Indies cricket must be about to produce another top class batsman or two?

If they do then given that Jayden Seales and the two Josephs seem to be a pace attack that can consistently trouble the very best perhaps that fourth rising will still come, however unlikely that may currently appear to be. I certainly hope so.