West Indies Cricket…again

9

Implications
In the appointment of Bennett King is does appear that the WICB did not engage in adequate analysis of what it was doing.
No reasonable person could have understood how it became possible for an organisation that has been in existence as long as the WICB would employ an entire coaching staff from Australia and not cater for an understudy so that at the end of their tenure there would be someone from within our region to continue the process of development that was started.
The WICB seemed to have lost itself in the process of attempting to fast track the revitalisation of the West Indies team. In the process the broader issues relating to the development of the game in the region have been overlooked.
It seemed that the WICB was more anxious to have the team suddenly surge back into the international cricketing limelight so that the hosting of the Cricket World Cup 2007 would be financially viable rather than address the thorny and more debilitating issue of the paucity of the game regionally.
Former captain of the West Indies team, Brian Lara, rather interestingly, appears to have been the first individual in that capacity to have spoken out vociferously about and against the decision of the WICB to leave the captain out of the team selection process. One or two of the others have been associated with similar comments but the regional media and the WICB did little to bring forward a forum for reasonable discourse on so critical a matter.
The WICB went ahead therefore and left the selectors to their own devices in the hope that all will go well. That has not been the case. All has not gone well. Not by a long shot.
The decision later on to leave all matters relating to what takes place on the field of play regarding the West Indies team in the hands of the coach and not of the captain was perhaps the most ridiculous that has ever occurred in the history of the game in the region.
No reasonable person could understand what would have prompted the WICB to have allowed such a situation to arise.