Windies cricket on deathbed? Why West Indies' shock T20I series loss to Nepal casts a shadow over their future

The West Indian team has gone through a major decline in Tests and One-Day Internationals over the last three decades. The team representing the former British colonies in the Caribbean used to be the standout side from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, but struggled to compete against the best since the turn of the millennium, especially in the five-day format.

West Indies’ glory days appeared to have returned in the 2010s with all-rounder Daren Sammy leading a golden generation that won two T20 World Cups in a space of four years. That success, however, was limited to the 20-over format with the Men in Maroon making little progress in Tests and ODIs in the corresponding period.

West Indies’ decline, however, appears complete in the 2020s with the team now struggling in all three formats, their performances going from bad to worse, to downright abysmal.

Their failure to move past the first round in the 2021 T20 World Cup , which they had entered as the defending champions, was the first worrying sign. Their inability to qualify for the 2023 ICC World Cup – a tournament that they had won under Clive Lloyd’s leadership in 1975 and 1979 – further deepened the crisis that West Indian cricket found itself in, leading to questions over their future and the direction in which they were headed.

The team would then hit an all-time low after Australia would bundle them out for just 27 to complete a 3-0 Test series whitewash in July, which forced Cricket West Indies (CWI) to call an emergency meeting with legends such as Lloyd, Viv Richards and Brian Lara to work on a roadmap for the future.

Nepal series defeat deepens crisis 

And just when one assumed things could not get any worse, the West Indies suffered a T20I series defeat at the hands of Nepal with a game to spare, getting downright outplayed in the must-win second game of the three-match series in Sharjah.

The Rhinos’ 19-run victory in the series opener on Saturday could be viewed as an aberration of sorts by some. The T20 format, after all, is a highly unpredictable one where one mistake can have a greater impact on the final outcome compared to Tests and ODIs, where a team gets more time to mount a comeback. For the West Indians to then get bundled out for 83 after being set 174 to win is shocking and even absurd. Especially after Nepal were reduced to 14/2 in the powerplay but managed to post 173/6 in the end.

Nepal certainly have shown improvement for a team that wasn’t even an Associate nation under the old ICC membership structure until 1996, when it played its maiden international game. It took them nearly two decades since they gained Associate status to make their maiden appearance in a major event – the 2014 T20 World Cup in Bangladesh, where they defeated Afghanistan in the first round and finished second in their group.

Their progress since then has been slow, with Nepal having featured in two major tournaments since then – the 2023 Asia Cup and last year’s T20 World Cup. Afghanistan, meanwhile, had reached the semi-finals in the latter of those two events and are also a Full Member.

Despite their recent progress, the gulf between the two teams remained a significant one, with West Indies ranked 12 places above Nepal in the current ICC T20I rankings at sixth. Nepal, additionally, had never played a T20I series against a Full Member before, and were always going to be labelled the underdogs. The West Indian squad for the series, additionally, wasn’t exactly what one would describe as full-strength with first-choice players such as regular captain Shai Hope missing.

However, the selectors did include senior players such as Jason Holder, Fabian Allen, Kyle Mayers and captain Akeal Hosein, all of whom are a lot more used to the rigours of the highest level of the sport than their opponents in their most recent assignment.

Holder was even part of the West Indian squad that lifted the T20 World Cup with a thrilling victory over England at Kolkata’s iconic Eden Gardens less than a decade ago. The seam-bowling all-rounder, who has 3,073 runs and 162 wickets to his name in 69 Test appearances, would perhaps be best-qualified to summarise the team’s decline in the last nine years.

West Indies stamped their authority over Nepal in the third T20I on Tuesday, bundling their opponents out for 122 before chasing the target down with 10 wickets and nearly eight overs to spare. The consolation victory, however, does not take away from the fact that West Indian cricket is on its deathbed, if it hasn’t flatlined already.

Is there a future for West Indian cricket anymore? 

The West Indies cricket team, after all, isn’t like most other international cricket teams; it is a team that represents a group of countries rather than a single cricket-playing nation like India, Pakistan or Nepal. Maintaining a sense of unity in a group where individuals carry different national loyalties is far easier said than done.

Throw in a dose of corruption and maladministration, with CWI being notoriously miserly when it comes to paying their cricket stars, as well as the rise of T20 leagues and other alternate career paths, including in other sports, and one can begin to understand the mess that West Indian cricket finds itself in.

Had it not been for the West Indies’ domination of the sport for nearly two decades, it might have gone down the same route as the erstwhile East African cricket team, which comprised Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, and got disbanded in 1989 after featuring in the 1975 World Cup.

Discussions surrounding the dissolution of the West Indian cricket team, with powerhouses such as Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana going their own separate ways, have gained traction in the last five years, especially after their disastrous ODI World Cup qualifying campaign in the summer of 2023 .

The topic will no doubt be trending within West Indian cricket circles as well as among experts and fans elsewhere in the world over the course of the next few days. That the team plays a two-Test series against India in the latter’s backyard doesn’t help either, with the full-strength team expected to get rolled over in Ahmedabad and Kolkata later this month.

That said, there are plenty of fixtures for Men in Maroon to redeem themselves in the build-up to the T20 World Cup, starting with a white-ball tour of Bangladesh immediately after the Test series in India.

West Indies certainly won’t be expected to win all contests, not with away tours in New Zealand and South Africa to follow. But playing a solid brand of cricket where they remain competitive regardless of the result will restore faith in West Indian cricket that is completely absent at present.