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Mosiah
Moderator
USA
30 Posts |
 Posted - Dec 25 2003 : 07:58:14 AM
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'Blind spots' hindering Windies - Cozier
Observer Reporter
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
The use of video technology in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of opponents has become basic in international cricket and sport as a whole.
But according to leading cricket writer Tony Cozier, who is in southern Africa with the West Indies cricket team, the Caribbean side begun their tour without seeing footage of South Africa and Zimbabwe in their most recent series.
"No video footage of South Africa's series in England during the summer - or Zimbabwe's two Tests in Australia that preceded the West Indies trip there - was available to coaches or players prior to the tour," Cozier wrote in his column 'Cozier on cricket' in the Barbados Nation newspaper.
Cozier, a Barbadian, who has followed the West Indies cricket team as writer and broadcaster since the mid-1960s reported that "according to (West Indies) coach Gus Logie, what they (team management) did get from England was on the PAL system and useless since the West Indies Cricket Board only had NTSC video-recorders.
"As far as Zimbabwe were concerned, there was nothing - PAL, NTSC, whatever. When, on arrival in Harare, the West Indies management asked the Zimbabwe Cricket Union to borrow some tapes of their Australian Tests, they drew an understandable refusal from officials shocked by their timerity.
"These are astonishing, but thoroughly believable, stories that help to explain the current state of West Indies cricket."
Cozier suggested that West Indies bowlers' lack of knowledge about the opposition contributed to the ease with which, South Africa's captain Graeme Smith scored a rapid century on the first day of the first Test which the home side eventually won easily.
"Smith's run-scoring, as anyone who did watch him reel off his back-to-back double hundreds in England last summer could attest, is heavily biased towards the leg-side. He is clearly restricted on the off.
"It was intelligence that clearly escaped the West Indies bowlers while he was taking 22 fours off them in his 132 on the first day," Cozier wrote.
According to him, West Indies captain Brian Lara's "comment prior to the Test that he had never seen him (Smith) bat revealed an ominous omission in planning".
Cozier also lashed the tour selectors for choosing pacer Corey Collymore for the first Test, though it was known that the bowler had a suspect hamstring.
"Collymore is a combative cricketer who has had to overcome adversity more than once to get where he is. Since his belated return to the Test team, he has been consistently the best bowler but to take him into the Test in his condition was an ill-advised gamble, as was soon clear," Cozier wrote.
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use of video technology
