This article describes the history of West Indies cricket from 1971 to 1980.
The West Indies cricket team was in transition as the 1970s began and it suffered a humiliating series defeat on the 1975–76 tour of Australia. New captain Clive Lloyd was determined that such a defeat must never happen again and decided that the lessons of that tour must be learned. On the 1975–76 tour, the difference between the two teams was the aggressive pace bowling of Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee. Lloyd decided that West Indies must nurture its own pace battery to create similar havoc among its opponents. The emergence of Andy Roberts and Michael Holding at this time ensured that the first implementation of the new policy on the 1976 tour of England was a success. West Indies could still produce great batsmen too and few have been better than Viv Richards.
The combination of outstanding pace bowling and top-class batting enabled West Indies to dominate world cricket for more than 15 years until the 1990s.
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Trinidad and Tobago, captained by Joey Carew, retained their Shell Shield title. They beat Combined Islands and Barbados, and drew with Jamaica and Guyana.
The Beaumont Cup, a first-class knock-out competition competed for by North Trinidad, South Trinidad, Central Trinidad and East Trinidad, was retained by North Trinidad when the final between themselves and East Trinidad was drawn. This was the first season in which the competition had been expanded to four teams. From its inception in 1926, only North and South Trinidad had previously competed.
Note: DWF = drawn, won on first innings. LWF = drawn, lost on first innings.
| 1970–71 West Indian cricket season – leading batsmen by average | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Innings | Runs | Highest | Average | 100s | |
| 16 | 1169 | 220 | 97.41 | 5 | ||
| 15 | 889 | 178* | 74.08 | 4 | ||
| 13 | 883 | 212 | 67.92 | 3 | ||
| 9 | 336 | 95 | 67.20 | 0 | ||
| 13 | 652 | 96 | 65.20 | 0 | ||
| 1970–71 West Indian cricket season – leading bowlers by average | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Balls | Maidens | Runs | Wickets | Average | |
| 821 | 36 | 297 | 17 | 17.47 | ||
| 1119 | 71 | 331 | 16 | 20.68 | ||
| 1290 | 42 | 593 | 27 | 21.96 | ||
| 1554 | 54 | 773 | 33 | 23.42 | ||
| 1068 | 45 | 405 | 17 | 23.82 | ||
Qualification: 10 or more wickets.
India defeated West Indies by one match to nil, with four matches drawn. Their win came in the second Test, at Port-of-Spain. It was their first win in 25 Tests between the two countries. Sunil Gavaskar, aged twenty-one and in his first Test series, scored 774 runs in four Tests, at an average of 154.80. Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan took 22 wickets at 33.91.