With the ex­pec­ta­tions of fans all around the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean rang­ing from low to ze­ro, the West In­dies crick­et team will have to dig deep to de­liv­er an im­prob­a­ble vic­to­ry in the Sec­ond Test against In­dia which bowls off to­day at the Queen’s Park Oval, Port-of-Spain.

This Test match is tak­ing place at the low­est point in the 95-year his­to­ry of West In­dies crick­et and is over­shad­owed by the team’s re­cent hu­mil­i­at­ing los­ing streak. Things are like­ly to get worse, with records on the brink of top­pling if the re­gion­al team’s cur­rent bad form con­tin­ues in this his­toric 100th Test be­tween both coun­tries.

Vi­rat Kohli will be aim­ing to score his 25th Test cen­tu­ry in the 2nd Test match and be­come on­ly the fourth play­er in the his­to­ry of the game to score 25 or more cen­turies in both the ODI and Test for­mats of the game and Kuldeep Ya­dav is on the verge of cross­ing 100 wick­ets for In­dia in just his 47th bowl­ing in­nings.

The odds are not in favour of the West In­dies which has not won a Test se­ries against In­dia in 21 years.

It seems high­ly un­like­ly that the team will be able to buck their los­ing trend af­ter last week’s abysmal per­for­mance in the first Test in Do­mini­ca, where they were bun­dled out for 150 and 130 in two in­nings with­in three days.

That crush­ing loss came soon af­ter dis­as­trous per­for­mances in the World Cup qual­i­fiers in Zim­bab­we—a sev­en-wick­et de­feat in a cru­cial en­counter against Scot­land on the heels of an ex­cru­ci­at­ing de­feat against the Nether­lands at the group stage.

The Nether­lands’ loss prompt­ed a scathing Face­book post by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley who de­scribed it as “the worst crick­et match ever played by a West In­dies team”. It was an opin­ion shared by fans all around the re­gion.

The team’s ex­it from the ODI World Cup qual­i­fiers means that the West In­dies will be miss­ing from the tour­na­ment for the first time since its in­cep­tion in 1975.

This is a bit­ter pill for le­gions of Caribbean fans, some of whom wit­nessed the glo­ry days of the team from the mid-1970s to the ear­ly 1990s when West In­dies bats­men and bowlers con­sis­tent­ly pro­vid­ed some of the most un­for­get­table mo­ments in World Cup his­to­ry.

It is hard to con­nect the cur­rent team to that side which was then the strongest in the world in both Test and One Day In­ter­na­tion­al crick­et.

Sad­ly, nei­ther in form nor com­mit­ment can the cur­rent crop of play­ers be com­pared to leg­ends like Sir Vi­vian Richards, Sir Clive Lloyd, Desmond Haynes, Sir Curt­ly Am­brose, Court­ney Walsh, and Bri­an Lara.

But it was all so long ago. Are those days gone for­ev­er?

Is there any hope of a crick­et re­vival in the West In­dies?

Cari­com, the re­gion­al group­ing that re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ed its 50th an­niver­sary, was still in its in­fan­cy in 1975 when the West In­dies team cap­tained by Sir Clive Lloyd was crowned the first World Cup cham­pi­ons beat­ing Aus­tralia.

In sharp and painful con­trast, the cur­rent team is ranked eighth in Tests, tenth in ODIs, and sev­enth in T20Is in the of­fi­cial ICC rank­ings.

Crick­et fans will be wish­ing for a mirac­u­lous change of for­tunes to­day. Hope­ful­ly, the play­ers will spare a thought for their many dis­ap­point­ed fans and de­liv­er an un­like­ly vic­to­ry this week.