Once upon a time, the West Indies sent a cricket team to Australia, which contained a lot of youngsters, with obvious talent, but also very little experience.
Some of the more seasoned campaigners opted out of the tour, because of lucrative offers in other parts of the world where they could ply their trade as ‘T-20 experts.’
One former Australian player was brutal to the extreme: He referred to the Windies team as ‘pathetic and hopeless.’
Just as in a previous era when our Windies team was irked by Tony Greg’s ‘make them grovel,’ remark, so too the young guns were inspired.
Australia won the first test match quite convincingly, but some of the youngsters showed real promise—especially Shamar Joseph.
On day four in the second test match, Australia needed just 156 runs for an ‘expected’ victory, with all of 8 wickets in hand.
Who dared to think differently? After all, West Indies had not won a test match in Australia for the past 27 years!
Enter the wounded Shamar Joseph, with a painful big toe which could have earned him a well-deserved rest in the pavilion, but instead, he bravely strode onto the field of play and dared his captain to get the ball from his grasp, ‘until the last wicket fell.’
He sometimes clocked speeds of 150 km/h and tormented the Aussies into submission.
Wen he was done he had pulled off a miraculous 7 for 64; gotten 13 wickets in the series; earned himself the man of the match and man of the series awards and led the Windies team to an incredible 8 run victory!
The young Windies team and their thousands of die-hard fans around the world, celebrated the moment with unbridled joy and pride.
…. And they lived happily ever after…….
Summarized scores: West Indies 311 and 193 beat Australia 289 for 9 dec and 207 (Smith 91*, Green 42, S Joseph 7-68) by 8 runs