Tony Becca

West Indies cricket is in a bad way and to the fans, to those who apparently suffer most, it is the result of many things, but more so the inefficiency of the board and its inability to lead.

The board, for example, has failed most times to put its foot down on matters of discipline. The board, which by its own admission is almost broke, has failed to put together a proper pay structure in place and instead has allowed the players to stick it up, to hold it to ransom, before almost every tour and the board has demonstrated so little faith, so little belief in the West Indian people and therefore in itself, that every time it wants an expert, in spite of the many great batsmen, bowlers and fielders the region has produced, it runs overseas.

May be the board has never stopped to think that by running overseas for coaches, trainers and physiotherapists, it is telling the players that West Indians are not good enough, in extension that they, the players, are not good enough, that the players probably are left with an inferior complex and that may well be the reason why they surrender under the slightest pressure.

Batsmen of yesterday, players like Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Seymour Nurse, Clive Lloyd, Alvin Kallicharran, Lawrence Rowe, Viv Richards, Richie Richardson, not even Larry Gomes, Jeffrey Dujon, or Gus Logie, would have ran away from a bowler, any bowler, as Chris Gayle did recently when, instead of going in at number one and facing the music in the form of Chaminda Vaas, he went in at number six.

Real problem

Apart from its obvious belief that despite the great heights attained by West Indians and by the team itself nothing good can come out of the West Indies, the real problem with the board is not so much that it has no respect for its own - for the West Indian people.

The real problem, as it has demonstrated over the years, is that it is inefficient.

Apart from the number of times when players and officials arrived at hotels and there was no booking for them, apart from the number of times when changes were made to itineraries for domestic tournaments long before and no one knew about them until a day or two before match time, and apart from the lack of promotion before matches - domestic as well as international - one can never forget, for example, the embarrassment when the West Indies Board sent a team to the Youth World Cup with a number of players over the age limit.

That was not only embarrassing, it was also costly.

Recently, and based on reports, Chris Gayle, the captain of the West Indies, questioned the honesty and the integrity of two qualified umpires officiating in a tournament organised by the board and up to now, the board has not said a single word about a kind of behaviour which cannot be good for West Indies cricket.

One perfect example of the board's inefficiency, and possibly dishonesty, however, took place just a few days ago when it cancelled the three-day tour match between Sri Lanka and the West Indies 'A' team scheduled for Shaw Park in Tobago on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

According to a short, very short release from the board two days before the match was supposed to have started, the game was cancelled. It was cancelled due to flight problems and whether it was true or not, that was an embarrassment which must have stemmed from inefficiency.

According to the ICC's Future Tours programme, the board knew since 2000 that Sri Lanka would be touring the West Indies in 2008, the itinerary was planned a long time ago and although it was rumoured that five Jamaicans, including Brendan Nash, were on the 'A' squad, up to now no one knows who were the members of the squad.

Flight problems

What is known, however, is that one of the Jamaicans was called last Tuesday to say that he was in the team and he was called again last Wednesday to say that the match was cancelled.

According to the board's release, it was cancelled because of flight problems.

That, however, cannot be true - not with that match scheduled to have started last Saturday and run through to yesterday, with the Carib Beer Series still on, not with the Leeward Islands versus the Combined Campuses and Colleges, and the Trinidad and Tobago versus Barbados matches starting on Friday and going through to yesterday, and not with the Guyana versus Wind-ward Islands match starting last Saturday and going through to today.

With six of the seven teams in the region in action on all three days, even if the West Indies Board had the services of all the planes and all the boats in the world, the only way the match between Sri Lanka and the West Indies 'A' could have been played on the weekend is if they christened the Jamaica team, the team that had completed its fixtures and was therefore out of action, and called it the West Indies 'A'.

After its lack of respect for the people of the West Indies, after its lack of confidence in the people of the West Indies, unless the West Indies Board now looks at the people of the West Indies as fools, it is as simple as that.