Lament West Indies’ decline, but don’t forget to cheer Netherlands’ rise

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

World Cup was understandable. For the older generation of cricket fans and followers, the West Indies represent a glorious past, a time when they travelled to all corners of the cricketing world and thrashed the opposition. They were the all-conquering heroes in the 1980s, beating the predominant England and Australia Test sides a whopping 28 times while losing just thrice.

In a sense, they were not just cricketers but a band of revolutionaries who ended the hegemony of whites in the sport, at least on the field. They showed how race discrimination had no basis and non-whites could be good at sport, or anything for that matter. And they did that in their own style, adding the Caribbean flair to cricket’s limited palette.

It was entertaining, effective, brave, and refreshing at the same time. When the International Cricket Conference, which was later rechristened as the International Cricket Council, launched its first limitedovers World Cup in 1975, West Indies won it without losing a game. They repeated the same kind of total dominance four years later to win the second World Cup on the trot.

It is this West Indies that people remember when they lament the reality of a World Cup without the winners of the first two editions. Not the one that failed to reach an ODI World Cup final since 1983 and semi-finals since 1996. In the World Cup Qualifiers (WCQs), they weren’t even close to finishing in the top two.