I watched the highlights of Brian Lara's 153 not out against Australia earlier Saturday. It was great.
A ram-packed Kensington Oval, The Prince being princely, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh being comically bad at batting, a one-wicket win and a bloke doing backflips on the outfield as Lara is escorted off by security. Steve Waugh looks angry; Shane Warne has zinc on his nose. It's the best.
Wistful yearning for West Indies cricket of old is always dull and almost always preceded by a sigh that "they all play basketball these days". Which no matter how often it is said, will still never be true.
Even the Guardian's match report from that day, 25 years ago, refers to the notion of cricket in the region being dead. Test cricket dying; the young being work shy; and the standard of refereeing being worse than ever. The three eternal truths of this world. Said by every generation in history.
But cut to St Lucia - in a dead-rubber fourth of five T20Is. It's a series where the integrity of the result has been corrupted by a shift in start times to better suit UK TV audiences that have made all seven games win toss, win match, events, with a touring side that is sub-strength because of a scheduling clash and it all played out to a backing track of Sweet Caroline in the land of dancehall, soca and reggae. Well, it was hard not to yearn.
Sweet Caroline should never be played in the Caribbean. There is being welcoming. And there is pandering. If you are a local West Indian fan and you are going to watch a match that has been scheduled for an English fan's TV experience and designed for an English fan's in-ground experience. What, exactly, is left for you?
Earlier today Nicholas Pooran was presented with special jersey to highlight his 100 T20I in Barbados.
— Windies Cricket (@windiescricket) November 16, 2024
He is now has the most T20I appearances for West Indies (102).#TheRivalry | #WIvENG pic.twitter.com/sp1tYTcnO3
Of greatest frustration is that the yearning isn't only of the past, but a failure to capture the present. Shai Hope, Nicholas Pooran and Shimron Hetmyer, all in the XI on Saturday, represent the mess of scheduling and proliferation of the franchise game.
Hope boasts a non-Test first-class average of 51. It was reported that earlier this year he turned down the chance to return to Test cricket for the tour of Australia due to not having enough red-ball experience under his belt. Since his last Test in 2021, he has played just three first-class matches. One in 2022, where he scored a century for Barbados. And two in 2023 for Yorkshire, where he made two fifties in four innings.
Pooran - who Hope described after the game as "the best T20 batter in the world" - was presented with a shirt pre-match to commemorate him becoming the most capped T20I player in West Indies' history, overtaking Kieron Pollard. A self-described "son of franchise cricket", Pooran has played 369 T20 matches and five first-class games. In 2022, he said playing Test cricket was still in his plans.
Hetmyer, who burst onto the scene and averaged 47 after his first 15 ODIs, has since regressed. A return to the ODI team hasn't seen a return in runs. In his last 15 ODIs, he has averaged 12.61. In his last 20 T20Is, it is 17.82. He said earlier this year to the Cricketer that he still wishes to return to Test cricket, which he last played in 2019.
West Indies cricket is often cited as having a depth problem. That there isn't enough talent in the region to call players up who meet the level required. But unlike other teams, West Indies' challenge isn't just calling players up, it's calling players down. People they know who have the ability to play international cricket but for whatever reason aren't available. They also keep getting players pinched by England.
However, a crucial change was announced last month that players can now be selected for Test cricket even if they have not played in the regional domestic competition. That had previously impacted all of Hope, Pooran and Hetmyer with the competition overlapping with the IPL.
The old policy, according to Miles Bascombe, CWI director of cricket, "could not stand up to the current intensity of cricket schedules."
The West Indies Championship, now an eight-team tournament after the addition of a West Indies Academy side and the return of the Combined Campuses and Colleges team, mainly runs from February to April. Guyana, Hetmyer's nation, have won seven of the past nine titles.
"It is so difficult for me to just say that I'll go back into some red-ball cricket when the IPL is going on," Hetmyer, who last played for Guyana's red-ball team in 2022, said in July. "It is something that I have been thinking about, something that I've actually thought about a lot.
"You still have to think about your family and everything, because you can't just go into a supermarket and go, 'I play for West Indies', and they'll just give you stuff for free."
Each of the players is deeply committed to playing for West Indies in their own way. Hope is ODI captain, Pooran has expressed his desire to play another 100 T20s and Hetmyer wants to reach 100 ODIs as motivation for returning to the fold.
But nothing is guaranteed tomorrow and the money on offer to league hop and look after your family is better than churning out red-ball runs in February. Pooran knows that more than most after being involved in a car crash in 2015 that almost took away his ability to walk.
"It is still one of the legacies of T20 cricket, sadly, that so many of the guys have found the red-ball game not to be fitting their long-term agenda," Ian Bishop said on the Sky Cricket podcast earlier this year. "And I can't blame them. That's where the biggest revenue comes in."
It is worth pointing out that playing Test cricket is far from financially negligible. West Indies' match fees sit at around US$10,000. Being a full-time cricketer for West Indies is a lucrative job. It's just not as lucrative as playing for West Indies and others.
The trio of Pooran, Hetmyer and Hope are not alone in being international white-ball players with an interest in the longer format. Akeal Hosein has previously said he wishes to play Test cricket, while Kyle Mayers has recently fallen out of red-ball contention.
Ultimately, there is suspicion/hope that if you get a couple, you could get all of them. No doubt a reservation of joining a weakened Test side is an element of 'what's the point' if you're going to lose. But West Indies have the players to be competitive now.
"When we're growing up as kids we want to play for West Indies," Hope said about his team-mate Pooran's achievement of overtaking Pollard. "Sometimes we don't think about playing 100 games, 200 games. It's something he must cherish. It's an honour to play for West Indies and we always talk about that amongst each other."
Despite falling to a series loss against England, there is a coherence to West Indies' T20 cricket. Yes, some players skip a tour here or there but there is a core unit that turns out regularly with a set goal of becoming the No.1-ranked side in the world and to become world champions. Coach Daren Sammy deserves much of the credit for that, persuading the likes of Andre Russell, Evin Lewis and Hetmyer to return when they had otherwise ceased to play.
Sammy has shown it can be done to get the band back together and form a narrative around a West Indies national team. We can cross our fingers that the same could soon be true for the Test side also.