Tony Becca

ACCORDING TO the Oxford Dictionary, one of the meanings of spice is, apart from the fact that it is an aromatic or pungent vegetable substance used to flavour food, that it is an element providing interest and excitement.

Well, if that is so, there was certainly no spice in Grenada on Tuesday - and definitely not so in their lovely, comfortable and beautiful new stadium.

On Tuesday, in brilliant sunshine in St. George's, West Indies cricket was stripped and exposed - and embarrassingly so.

And it was not just the West Indies team - the 11 players, including the captain, who were selected to represent the West Indies on that day.

After winning their three matches in the first round of the World Cup, the West Indies skidded to their fourth successive defeat in four matches in the second round, and that was bad.

Remembering, however, that those four teams are above the West Indies, who are at number eight out of 10 in both the ICC's one-day and Test rankings, and that despite those who, for whatever reason, believe that the West Indies are blessed with exceptionally talented players and would have won the title, those performances were not so disappointing.

In other words, they were par for the course.

Disappointment

What was disappointing was that while non-ranked Ireland fought England in the Super Eights, while number nine Bangladesh upset South Africa and before Bangladesh pushed England to the wire on Wednesday, the West Indies were ripped apart and lost to Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa by embarrassing margins.

The fact that the West Indies, batting first or second,lost every match without a fight, is what, so far, has been disappointing - and very much so.

As bad as they have played, however, they are not to be blamed - at least not entirely.

The ones to be blamed are the people of the Caribbean - the heads of Governments who, apart from supporting and defending their own and therefore being insular, have done nothing but talk about West Indies cricket not all of them, the business people in the Caribbean who do nothing but sit in their boxes, at Test matches and one-day internationals, and criticise the players and the performance of the team, and the people in general - those who do not, neither by their presence at local matches nor by their contribution as members of the clubs, support the game at the lower levels - at its most important levels.

The ones most definitely to blame, however, are the members of the West Indies board and its affiliates.

The reasons are simple.

The West Indies board members are the ones who allow the selectors, not of 1950 but of this day and age, to get away with selecting players who have never, or maybe once or twice, represented their territory in the regional domestic competition, to get away with selecting players as batsmen on the West Indies team, players who have never made a century, or probably one, in the regional domestic competition, and to get away with selecting bowlers to the West Indies team - some of them with one or two first-class matches to their name, a few of them with none, and too many of them with neither wickets nor experience to back them up.

The West Indies board members are also the ones who allow the selectors to select players with a history of indiscipline on and off the field, and the ones who allow the West Indies Players Association, which has no interest but to fill the pockets of the players while ignoring the first-class players and other issues involving the future of West Indies cricket, to stick up, almost on a daily basis, West Indies cricket.

The West Indies board members are also the ones who, for whatever reason, allow the president - an inexperienced president who knows little about the game, to get away with naming, among others, the West Indies captain - a man who had been there twice before.

Board stands accused

For that the West Indies board stands accused and should be found guilty of what has been happening to a West Indies team which, even given that it does possess some talented players, is filled with prima donnas who care little for training and for practice. They are also lacking in pride of performance and apparently believe that even when they do not perform. they have a God-given right to represent the West Indies.

The board's affiliates around the region stand accused and are also guilty as charged.

They are the ones who, over the years, have been so insular that they defend their man regardless of what he does - on and off the field. They are the ones who turn a blind eye to the lack of commitment of their players - and especially so the so-called stars, and they are the ones who turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the complaints, when it comes to the general deportment and the general behaviour of the players - those directly under their control, or those who should be under their control.