Ramnaresh Sarwan, the former captain and batsman of West Indies, is worried about Test cricket in the Caribbean today, as it may cause a drain of talented people to America when nobody wants to watch long games any more.
The rise of T20 cricket has led players to abandon red-ball cricket. According to Sarwan, there should be at least ten first-class matches per season compared to five currently played by cricketers who are learning their skills in the traditional format.
Furthermore, aside from not emphasising on test cricket, Ramnaresh Sarwan also gives the lack of enough facilities for playing cricket in the region.
The 44-year-old player who has scored over 10 thousand runs in 87 tests and 181 one-day internationals shared his career with fellow Guyanese Shivnarine Chanderpaul and legendary Brian Lara for a significant part of it.
“Oh yeah I think that test cricket is very low at this stage. I don’t think among the games that we play here in the Caribbean it is enough to develop our players; but I also feel this big threat of T20 which many individuals are showing interest in shortest forms,” he said.
“I think one of our biggest challenges has been facilities in our region. And so… yeah… we’ll see what happens,” he added
Ramnaresh Sarwan does not oppose cricketers earning huge amounts from these franchise leagues since he knows whenever they come calling for global assignments, money talks; however, he believes that this temptation seems to be influencing his daughter’s favorite game which brought him immense joy during his days at Providence Stadium.
Based on where things are going right now with the game itself as well as its future path, Sarwan feels that this will result into a large number of Caribbean nationals moving out to American continent due to rising popularity after hosting World T20 Cup and inclusion into Olympic program slated for Los Angeles Games (2028).
““I think having T20 format in the US, which is so close to the Caribbean… I mean of course they (players) would have the opportunity now to participate in the short format of the game in the US.
“So you might find a lot of people jumping ship in terms of coming to the US and start participating in T20 and of course try and see if they could find a way in terms of becoming legal in the US and then start hopefully pushing the play in the US.” He also spends a lot of time here,” said Sarwan.
Sarwan is busy managing two restaurants situated within Georgetown. According to him, one is a combination of Italian-American foods while another one offers Thai-Indian fusions.
On discussing more about longer formats, he says that it’s not something that can be achieve solely within Caribbean; ICC has to come into picture by limiting number of T-20 tournaments happening across globe.
“The only thing that one should do is to get the best available players for all those leagues. And of course everybody wants to be national representatives as well. Therefore, the hardest part is to determine what kind of the best scenario would be possible. I think at some stage ICC would have to step in but I don’t see it happening any time soon,” Sarwan said.
He was asked whether T20 Leagues coming up affect players who wanted to play for West Indies and particularly Test cricket. “I wouldn’t say has diminished, but mainly because of shorter matches formats many players are more focused on this type than long formats of the game. So they would probably concentrate more on shorter format rather than on long.”
The point is we all know what Test cricket has been about. For instance, why don’t we call it Test cricket? It has gone beyond five days and obviously everything about that match is a usual test.
“That is one of the reasons why, as I said before longer-format games, these guys might have lost a focus a bit” Sarwan explained.
However, despite the challenges facing Caribbean cricket there are still some reasons that make Sarwan optimistic with regard to several emerging talents from that region.
One player who impressed him was Guyanese fast bowler Shamar Joseph who made his debut in Test series against Australia in an impressive manner . According to Sarwan Joseph will develop into one of Windies key bowlers while watching Nicholas Pooran’s batting makes him ecstatic; he stated Pooran was a dynamic wicket-keeper batsman hailing from Trinidad and Tobago.
For example, among other cricket teams such team as South Africa always seemed attractive for Sarwan due to Hashim Amla being there as their member. When talking about Indian cricket he always chooses two top persons: Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.
Ramnaresh Sarwan concludes by saying “I admire Rohit for his confidence and that he does everything stylishly. As for Virat, besides his batting ability, I love the way he approaches the game, works hard on his fitness and is not afraid to engage verbally with the opposition.”
