The West Indies cricket team just doesn't get it: that the excuses and rationalisations have worn thin; that the emotional flagellation to which they subject their fans is becoming too high a price for people's support.

Brian Lara and his men should know by now failure of itself is not an endearing quality and that consistent failure is worse. But even worse than that is a lack of character; and that is what this West Indies team has put on show too often and what was on display at Florence Hall, Trelawny, on Friday - an effete spinelessness.

In their final warm-up match ahead of the formal start of the Cricket World Cup and their first match in the tournament, the West Indies' batting collapsed against India for a mere 85 runs. There were devils in the pitch, but for some decent, consistent bowling by the Indians, who then placed the issue in its proper perspective in getting the runs in 18 overs for the loss of a single wicket.

It has happened before. But there is a broader context that makes Friday's meek surrender by the West Indies particularly painful. There is this sense that this team is surrendering a legacy of which they know, or care to know, little and cherish even less.

Yet, it is this legacy that is the foundation upon which several, small, poor, early post-colonial nations of mostly black and dark-skinned people shell out perhaps US$500 million and move to host the Cricket World Cup. These are the resources primarily of the ordinary Joes, on whose behalf and behalf of their children and grandchildren our governments have borrowed to help finance the tournament.

West Indian people have, for the most part, accepted this burden, because of the context they ascribe to cricket: its central and liberating role in the emergence of a Caribbean civilisation, that remains a work in progress. Indeed, the character, social structure and organisation of these societies of transplanted people have changed tremendously in the 120 years since the first overseas tour by a West Indies cricket team. The game played nosmall part in that transformation; we raised powerful armies of men with names like, John, Constantine, Headley, Worrell, Sobers, Lloyd, Richards. They probed and harried until they defeated the mighty and gained dominance. They gave us confidence and joy.

Lara and company are inheritors of a proud lineage, a legacy which it has been their wont to squander and trifle with, which is the only way to characterise the behaviour of highly-paid and demanding professionals, who apparently see themselves as mere minstrels. Losing is one thing, lack of grit and meek acquiescence is another.

As they participate in today's opening ceremony for the Cricket World Cup, Lara and his men should remind themselves that in these isles, cricket is more than details, it encompasses our lives.

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