The embarrassment that is West Indies Cricket

The current Australian tour of the West Indies continues to expose the embarrassment that is West Indies Cricket.

For some time it has been clear that here in the Caribbean we do not seem anxious to establish ourselves as professionals in sport.

No one would believe that there was once a time when the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) carried a team to a World Youth Cricket Tournament and several of the players were too old to play. Someone apparently misread the documentation and paid little attention to the age requirement. The decision of the Board was apparently to leave the older players overseas since they were already there and send in eligible replacements.

The Board, unanswerable to anyone but itself, simply acknowledged that it made a mistake and all was forgotten. There is, however, little doubt that the international cricket community reeled in laughter at what could only have been a tragic comedy, to say nothing of its wasteful expense.

Some years ago we had the spectre of the WICB being embarrassed when the cricket pitch in Jamaica was so unsound for play that the test match had to be cancelled. It was the first time that this had occurred in the Caribbean and perhaps in the world for the reason given.

One person claimed that the day before the scheduled commencement of the test match someone threw a ball onto the pitch and it just stayed where it landed. It could not move. In other words it got stuck in what should have been a good pitch.