Tym Glaser
LIKE SOME sport version of Groundhog Day, the West Indies cricket team has returned from yet another tour abroad with nothing to show and its tail between its legs.
It's the same old, tired story time and time again and, unlike the Bill Murray film, it's not at all funny.
Washed out third Test in Napier (where the top order showed a little mettle) aside, the tour of the Shaky Islands was an abysmal failure. They lost the one-day series 4-1, the only victory being in the final dead rubber, and the three-Test series 2-0. They threw away a golden chance to finally win a Test abroad in the first outing in Auckland and barely put up a fight in the second Test in Wellington.
Well done guys. Thanks for going. Why did you bother coming back?
Like the good Antipodean spin doctors that they are, coach Bennett King and his team will point to the 'positives' of the tour of New Zealand.
Expect to hear about the experience gained, the tough, unfamiliar conditions and the emergence of the hard-hitting Runako Morton and the improved bowling of Fidel Edwards and Daren Powell.
However, that's like the captain of the Titanic saying the lifeboats floated really well.
WINDOW DRESSING
No amount of window dressing can hide the fact that the Losedies are simply woeful and getting worse. I'm no big fan of rankings but the current Test standings do show how great the gulf is between our side and the rest of the traditional cricket teams.
The Windies are ranked eighth with 72 points, ahead of non-factors Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.
The seventh ranked side, Sri Lanka, has 97 points 25 more than our heroes. Now, the gap between the Sri Lankans and No. 2 side, England (113), is 16 points. Get the picture here?
For those keeping count, Australia lead comfortably with 129 points in the bank but what the figures really say is that the rest of the world is pretty tightly bunched and the West Indies have fallen off the back of the pack.
The team is in a serious downward spiral and it is getting faster and faster. The expensive coaching staff is simply not getting its message through and for every Morton taking a step forward, three other players are marching backwards.
Brian Charles Lara has gone from a Prince to a Pauper in a short space of time and only appears capable of one good knock in six nowadays rather than one in every two or three in years before.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul has been an unmitigated disaster as skipper and his batting has fallen off so dramatically that, but for being the captain, he probably should not even be in the side.
Even promising young 'keeper Denesh Ramdin has fallen back to earth after a stellar start to his Test career, with an average display behind the stumps in New Zealand and a terrible average with the bat (8.25).
This is a team in need of a radical overhaul but the depth of regional talent is just not there to do it.
This all augurs extremely badly for next year's World Cup, not only for the team but the event itself. When South Africa were knocked out early in their home event in 2003, local interest dropped like a lead balloon and hit the organisers severely in the pocket.
That's something we can ill-afford but better brace for next year.
