West Indies continue foolishness

241

There never seems to be a dull moment for West Indies cricket. Every time that things appear as though they are getting better they somehow take a turn for the worst.
In the recent past we have had the 20/20 debacle which led to the legal action with sponsors, Digicel. We have also had the embarrassment of the dismissal of Tony Deyal. There was the dismissal then reinstatement then ‘resignation’ of Donald Peters.
Then we beat up on England in the Test series before and the 20/20 before losing in the One Day tournament all in the Caribbean.
This week’s Column focuses attention on the West Indies tour to England and the embarrassment that we are all facing once more because of what can only be described as the ongoing lack of professionalism of the West Indies Cricket Board – WICB.

The England tour
Anyone looking on at the current test series taking place in England would have been agonisingly sympathetic with the West Indian players as they all appeared to have found the weather all too uncomfortable. Perhaps it is a case of it being spring and the English weather may well still be too cold for the boys from the Caribbean.
How did we end up in this mess anyway?
Is it about money?
Are we so financially weak that we had to accept this particular competition?
Surely the West Indies Cricket Board would have to shoulder the responsibility and all by itself. 
As far as the players were concerned there were no tours scheduled at this time and therefore they must have thought that it was their own time following the English tour of the Caribbean. They must have seen themselves free to do as they please.
No one can as yet fathom the rational of the WICB in agreeing to this hastily prepared tour of England in what may well be a most cruel time of the year for our players.
In the meantime, the players have had a very difficult time adjusting to English conditions. Performances thus far have all been well below par. Even the reliable Chanderpaul found immense difficulty in the first test match, in both innings returning to the pavilion with low scores under his belt. 
The situation on tour is such that thus far the more experienced players have fared no better than the newcomers. In the second innings of the first test only Brendan Nash and Denesh Ramdhin put up any real resistance to the English bowlers.
Where once we thought that in the absence of the stalwart English  bowlers we would have had an easy first test we surrendered to the new bowlers England brought into the fray.

The Bravo factor
One is not at all sure what is the status of Dwayne Bravo in so far as West Indies Cricket is concerned.
Bravo was declared injured some time ago. He missed the first part of the English tour of the Caribbean, ostensibly because he was not fully fit.
The presence of Bravo in newspapers in Trinidad and Tobago seemingly associated with activities other than cricket may well have allowed some of the region’s cricket biffs to ponder on just what was required of the young man by way of recovery from his injury.
Suddenly, we learnt of Bravo playing One Day cricket for his club in Trinidad and performing well with the bat, scoring at least one century.
As if possessive of some sort of mortgage with the WICB, we suddenly saw Bravo, who was out of competitive cricket for several months, recalled to the West Indies team.