Weak, divided West Indies face daunting challenge

Missing three key players, still without an appointed head coach, and just six weeks after the team's damaging and disruptive abandonment of the tour of India, West Indies set out on as daunting an assignment as there is in the contemporary game on Wednesday, the opening day of the first of three Tests against South Africa, in Centurion.

Their difficulty is compounded by the contrasting numbers. South Africa are currently No. 1 out of ten on the ICC's Test rankings, West Indies No. 8. In the three previous series for the Sir Vivian Richards Trophy on their home grounds, South Africa won ten of 12 Tests, West Indies one.

An encouraging start in their only preliminary match against a team of South African up-and-comers under the banner of an "Invitation XI" was a welcome boost to West Indies' confidence. The quality of the opposition come Wednesday will be much more formidable.

It requires all the optimism in the world and the knowledge that miracles do sometimes happen to shake the notion that they are in for a trouncing. In this case, an abundance of unwelcome circumstances further weaken the underdog.

Chris Gayle, Darren Bravo and Sunil Narine are missing for different reasons; so is Kieran Powell, another who might have been there but for his self-imposed absence from cricket of any sort since the first Test against New Zealand in Kingston in June.

Gayle's 35-year-old body is increasingly creaking from the effects of incessant cricket here, there and everywhere. Even as he was engaged in South Africa's T20 Ram Slam for the Highveld Lions, he cried off from the tour because of a persistent back injury. Quite apart from the explosive power at the top of the order that has brought him 21 international hundreds (two Test triples), it removes the experience of 103 Tests, 258 ODIs, 43 T20 internationals, plus innumerable matches in domestic franchise tournaments across the globe.

Devon Smith, a fellow left-hander, now 33, has been recycled in Gayle's place after a couple of productive seasons in regional cricket for the Windward Islands. He lacks Gayle's intimidating presence and record, averaging 24.71 in 33 spasmodic Tests since 2003, the last in 2011.

His natural aggression counters the unyielding defensive mindset of Kraigg Brathwaite, the 21-year-old right-hander who brings with him scores of 129 against New Zealand and 212 against Bangladesh in his previous four Tests, all in the Caribbean. Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Vernon Philander and their mates represent an altogether more taxing examination on the faster, bouncier surfaces of South Africa.

The younger Bravo's withdrawal for the second time in the year is, like the first, for "personal reasons". It weakens the middle order. The stand-ins - Assad Fudadin, Leon Johnson and Jermaine Blackwood - have seven modest Tests between them.

Even more so now than it ever has been throughout his 20 years in Test cricket, Shivnarine Chanderpaul has the task of shoring up the lower order. At 40, there are no signs that his ability and his appetite are waning. A consistent average better than 50 maintains his ranking at No. 3 on the ICC's Test batting list.

Narine, king of the white-ball mystery men, is the third absentee. He hasn't played since a couple of international umpires deemed his action illegal during the Champions League in India in September. He remains in Trinidad, aiming to reduce the straightening of his elbow to below the allowed 15-degree flex. It leaves the beanpole left-armer Sulieman Benn (79 wickets in 22 Tests at 35.6 each) as the one specialist spinner.

Given the likely conditions, the selectors have packed their bowling with fast men.

Kemar Roach's 111 wickets in 28 Tests at 25.98 have propelled him to No. 8 among the ICC's top Test bowlers. He and Jerome Taylor (100 wickets in 34 Tests) are the accredited spearheads. The back-ups, Shannon Gabriel (nine Tests), Sheldon Cottrell and Jason Holder (one each) are on their first trips to South Africa.

Cottrell, a former Jamaica Defence Force soldier, and Gabriel are two heavyweights, both capable of 140kph pace. Cottrell's left-arm over-the-wicket delivery offers variety; Holder, two metres tall, generates medium-fast lift. All except Taylor (30) are in their mid-20s.

The eight Tests over the next five months (the three in South Africa, three against England and two against Australia in the Caribbean) are likely to determine whether they form the future nucleus of the attack.

The lack of a head coach for the demanding schedule over the coming months, in South Africa and in Australia and New Zealand for the World Cup, reflects the board's indecisiveness. Ottis Gibson was dismissed a day before the home series against Bangladesh in August, since when his assistant, Stuart Williams, the Test opener of the late 1990s, has filled the role. It is an unsatisfactory arrangement.

The fallout from the India fiasco is another crucial consideration. The issue was temporarily settled through a deal, brokered by the intervention of Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines. It allowed the selection of the protesting players. They signed their tour contracts for South Africa only after being given the assurance that the new Memorandum of Understanding agreed between the WICB and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA), the source of the original crisis, would be renegotiated later.

It raises the question of the relationship between the six players in South Africa who departed India of their own accord and Marlon Samuels, who repeated that he was against abandonment.

Samuels' experience, quality batting and capable offspin bowling are vital to the strength of the team. At 33, he carries with him a record of 52 Tests and 162 ODIs over 14 years. It is pertinent that while his team-mates were discussing their grievances against the WICB and WIPA in India, he was stroking hundreds in two of the three ODIs played. He started in South Africa with an unbeaten 203 in the warm-up match.

In a recent wide-ranging interview in Sydney, Brian Lara alluded to the importance of cohesion. Asked about Sachin Tendulkar's comment that West Indies were a dark horse in the World Cup, he replied: "They will always be a dark horse. Yes, they have the cricketers but are they going to play as a team?" As Lara would know from his time as captain, divisions and distractions are recipes for failure.

If it all makes for a discouraging scenario, Stuart Hess, writing in the Johannesburg Star, has set out a realistic agenda for the team: "The onus is on the West Indies to show they are not here to be stomped on and that some of the changes in their first-class structure are positive."