One of the most inspiring sights in world cricket, actually speaking, is to see the West Indies doing well. Always a team that’s well liked. Always a team that’s egged on further to entertain and entertain. However, to see the West Indies do well is not really something that the modern day cricket fan has gotten around to see, especially in the last decade as more and more star players from the Caribbean have moved on from the national duties in the wake of the mushrooming franchise leagues around the world.

From being a global superpower that dominated T20 cricket for the national cause to finding one player too many eclipsing from the 22 yards in search of making the big bucks as one calls it, the West Indies have faced an enormous shortage of talent with many players simply losing their presence in the familiar maroon jersey. Think Kyle Mayers and Darren Bravo and the likes.

But what’s working a great deal for the men from the Caribbean is to see someone like former captain, two time World Cup winner Daren Sammy returning to the crop as coach. Not captain.

That’s an even bigger role and one that requires one to add clarity of thinking to long term planning.

Something that Daren Sammy has done in that he’s utilised the skill set available to his disposal in a manner to forge a long term focus on his team that wasn’t perhaps being taken as seriously as is the case today.

The West Indies are peaking. They’re playing to their potential. And the first time in several years, at the very least, they seem to be a well rounded unit where each of the eleven rises to shoulder responsibility for the collective benefit of the team instead of latching onto some ultra demigod T20 swashbuckler aura as was the case in the recent bygone years.

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So let’s try and understand with more clarity how Daren Sammy has turned around a corner for his West Indies cricket team:

Promoting Shimron Hetmyer to #3

Every once in a while there comes along a really fine batting talent that can further push the team’s attacking credentials and give the opponents some serious thinking work to do.

Just that in someone like Shimron Heymyer’s case, a batter closing in on 2000 T20I runs, the transformation has seemingly occurred in these last twelve months heading into the ongoing T20 World Cup.

Let’s make something clear for staters.

Hetmyer’s always had the talent. In abundance. But the ability to solidly back himself or extract that X factor within has been the letdown.

Not this time around.

Not on Daren Sammy’s watch, a coach who has been quote ware of the infinite talent that the powerful Guyanese possesses.

But in order to get him to do his best for the collective might of the West Indies, it was Sammy’s idea to further promote Hetmyer to 3.

And it almost seems that Hetty whiled away half his career as on date batting down the order. He didn’t even get that many overs, especially in white ball cricket to perform as well as he would have liked.

But as we see you see an attacking Shimron Hetmyer walk in to the crease today, you see a daredevil in the guise of a batter.

He’s a proper hitter of the ball who will seldom seem languid or lethargic against the spinners but will in fact take them head on.

He will begin to dominate the charts from the ball go.

At the most, will take a two or three ball period to get his eye in and once that is the case, the opposition can consider this that the game is perhaps going to be turned on its head.

This was the case against England when they had imposed early pressure over the West Indies. Hetmyer rammed into them.

This was also the case during the blazing left hander’s charismatic mad 85 off 31 that quite simply changed the game in entirety. The freedom and fun with which Hetmyer of the current bats is quite simply a sight to behold.

Backing Motie and Hosein

For the longest possible time the West Indians have been known for being an adrenaline spiking team. One made of mad hitters of the cricket ball who smash the pulp out of the white ball and make big headways into a game by tearing into bowling attacks.

The storyline has been pretty much this peppered by one giant slayer of the cricket ball after another.

There were the Gayle’s and Bravo’s and Pollard’s and Russell’s and then there are the Powell’s, Shepherd’s and the Hetmyer’s.

No one had really thought of the spinners and how they would play a decisive role especially in big key tournaments like the ICC World Cups.

Which is precisely where Sammy, ever since he’s taken over, has forged a key bowling duo of Akeal Hosein, active since the year 2021 and now as we can can from the mid of 2022, a period of time where he was in and out of the side, Gudakesh Motie.

Two brilliant left arm orthodox spinners who can take wickets on turning and banal wickets and make a contest out of a seemingly insipid or semi dead game.

Daren Sammy’s backing of Motie and Hosein’s pairing was evident just this recent event at the famous Wankhede where the dynamic bowling duo of the Trinidadian and the Guyanese dismantled the Zimbabweans.

At one point, Motie, 4 from his full spell of as many overs, was on a ha trick.

The duo took 7 wickets between them.

7 out of 10.

If that is not emphatic, then what is?

Sammy is an expressive- not docile- coach. He can be seen passing on instructions and is communicative. Just the sort of guy who can put his shoulder around you on a difficult match day and gear you up to perform to your full potential. The game isn’t quite over until Sammy’a done talking and motivating.

And his ability to rally - exactly the mantra of the West Indies team on the whole- has ushers his spinners to great heights.

Today, you cannot imagine the team sans both these spin aces. And they are turning on the heat for the West Indies as one can see.