27. Yes, 27 all out in a Test match. This isn't a re­al score. I be­lieve this is Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) con­duct­ing a so­cial ex­per­i­ment to gauge the ex­tent of how much pain an en­tire re­gion can en­dure.

Now, where do I start? For those in the back who think I've been too harsh on West In­dies crick­et, I'd like you to point out the pos­i­tive in a score that makes the "good old days" of 47 all out look like a bat­ting mas­ter­class. Let's be re­al, this didn’t just hap­pen on Mon­day, Ju­ly 14, 2025; this is the bit­ter, un­sea­soned fruit of years of ne­glect and re­fusal to lis­ten, no mat­ter how con­struc­tive or harsh the crit­i­cism was.

This de­ba­cle shouldn't come as a sur­prise to any­one, as this was the pre­dictable, trag­ic fi­nal act in a play we've been watch­ing for a long, long time. The cul­mi­na­tion of every ig­nored warn­ing, every hol­low promise, and every bad de­ci­sion fi­nal­ly caught up in a sin­gle, gut-wrench­ing mo­ment af­ter 14.3 overs.

I am sure you all re­mem­ber the Cari­com Re­gion­al Crick­et Con­fer­ence held at the Hy­att Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain in April 2024, with the theme “Rein­vig­o­rat­ing West In­dies Crick­et”. Ac­cord­ing to the Cam­bridge Dic­tio­nary, ‘rein­vig­o­rat­ing’ is de­fined as “to make some­thing stronger or more ex­cit­ing or suc­cess­ful again”. Which of those words has CWI adopt­ed? Un­for­tu­nate­ly, ‘stronger’, ‘ex­cit­ing’, and 'suc­cess­ful again’ are for­eign words to CWI. I at­tend­ed the con­fer­ence, and it was all talk; how­ev­er, there were some re­al­ly good pan­el dis­cus­sions with the promise to “rein­vig­o­rate” West In­dies crick­et.

Who­ev­er han­dled the pub­lic re­la­tions for CWI, con­grat­u­la­tions on the won­der­ful job you did, hav­ing peo­ple be­lieve that change was com­ing and we could ex­pect some pos­i­tive ac­tion from the Con­fer­ence. Thank­ful­ly, I am not that gullible, be­cause I knew noth­ing tan­gi­ble would come of that ex­er­cise. I em­pathise with Michael Hold­ing, who, in his video pre­sen­ta­tion, was brought to tears, and even that could not shake up the CWI hi­er­ar­chy.

For those of us pay­ing at­ten­tion, you could have seen the im­me­di­ate fu­ture of West In­dies crick­et in the tracks of Mr Hold­ing’s tears, in­clud­ing this 27-run rock bot­tom. Maybe, we should have all cried open­ly at the con­fer­ence rather than hurt­ing and cry­ing silent­ly in­side. But even then, the clue­less CWI would have thought it was tears of joy.

As I sug­gest­ed, I knew West In­dies would have lost the se­ries 3-0, but nev­er in my wildest dreams could I have imag­ined 27. The on­ly peo­ple I sym­pa­thise with are the bowlers who bowled their hearts out. Tak­ing 60 Aus­tralian wick­ets in three Test match­es was a re­mark­able achieve­ment. But we all knew, un­less you were liv­ing on Love Is­land, that the bat­ting could not have coped with the Aus­tralian bowlers. It is there­fore easy for me to blame the bats­men, say­ing all deroga­to­ry state­ments about them, but they did not pick them­selves. That's on King Sam­my, who de­cid­ed who was and wasn't good enough to rep­re­sent the West In­dies.

Then, to com­pound mat­ters, the pres­i­dent of CWI is­sues a re­lease about “we are in the re­build­ing phase”. What garbage? The West In­dies are "re­build­ing" with a 33-year-old cap­tain, a 33-year-old vice-cap­tain, rein­tro­duc­ing a 31-year-old open­er with lim­it­ed suc­cess, to part­ner a 32-year-old at the top of the or­der. Mean­while, they dis­card a 26-year-old in Al­ick Athanaze, an­oth­er 26-year-old who just turned 27 in Joshua Da Sil­va, and two 28-year-olds in Amir Jan­goo and Tevin Im­lach. Sounds like CWI is “re­build­ing” a bridge to nowhere.

Dr. (Kishore) Shal­low (CWI pres­i­dent), you can­not take 44.6 mil­lion peo­ple of the Caribbean for fools. The on­ly thing con­stant about CWI is their ab­ject fail­ures, which stem from the com­plete lack of crick­et knowl­edge among your board mem­bers. What is even more alarm­ing, is that the es­teemed pres­i­dent of CWI has on­ly just recog­nised the lack of crick­et­ing knowl­edge, so he has con­vened an emer­gency meet­ing to in­clude Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Vi­vian Richards, Bri­an Lara, Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, Desmond Haynes and Ian Brad­shaw to come up with tan­gi­ble, ac­tion­able rec­om­men­da­tions (some­thing I have been scream­ing to hap­pen for ages).

I won­der what the time frame is for these ac­tion­able rec­om­men­da­tions, be­cause the West In­dies are run­ning out of time. If we wait too long (which I fear we al­ready have), CWI will soon be ar­rang­ing games against Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and Dis­ney World (no dis­re­spect to Nepal or Papua New Guinea).

King Sam­my is a very af­fa­ble gen­tle­man who has giv­en tremen­dous ser­vice to West In­dies crick­et. Some will say he is not Je­sus Christ and can­not turn wa­ter in­to wine, but what West In­dies crick­et needs now is a red-ball coach with a proven, suc­cess­ful re­sumé. I don’t care if he is from Mars; he needs to look at the game in the re­gion, as­sess play­ers, and make his rec­om­men­da­tions. The non­sense that it must be a West In­di­an has to stop. Take Eng­land as an ex­am­ple, they have the ef­fer­ves­cent New Zealan­der, Bren­don Mc­Cul­lum, since May 2022. New Zealand them­selves have a South African, Rob Wal­ter, and I am sure it has noth­ing to do with their na­tion­al­i­ty, but their ex­pe­ri­ence, track record, tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, strate­gic think­ing, and peo­ple skills, which are just a few of the skills that are ex­pect­ed of a na­tion­al coach at this lev­el.

Then, you have the far­ci­cal re­gion­al tour­na­ment, where you play sev­en games with a two-week break be­tween rounds. In­stead of ex­tend­ing the sea­son to play more four-day crick­et — with games home and away, pos­si­bly in­creas­ing the tour­na­ment to 14 games — the sea­son ends up be­ing mean­ing­less for a young play­er try­ing to gain ex­pe­ri­ence in the longer for­mat of the game. If the young play­er does not break in­to the team im­me­di­ate­ly, with the cur­rent for­mat, he may on­ly play six First-Class match­es in two or three years! Yes, that's how CWI has been go­ing about “re­build­ing” red-ball crick­et in the re­gion.

Next, you have the Re­gion­al Boards that do what they want, but don’t com­plain; the var­i­ous re­gion­al mem­bers put them there. Look at the TTCB's first di­vi­sion crick­et; some teams would strug­gle to beat the num­ber one "fete match" team in the coun­try. Aren't these board mem­bers ashamed of how lo­cal crick­et is be­ing run? In­stead, they sit there and vote the same peo­ple in, as Ben­jai says, "over and over and over" with­out a shred of shame. This is part of the rea­son why it feels like we are stuck in a loop.

I am not go­ing to ro­man­ti­cise the past when ad­min­is­tra­tors worked for the love of the game, to see our crick­et reach a world-class lev­el, be­cause I have said it many times, and no one can change my opin­ion. Some are promised po­si­tions if they vote a cer­tain way, and if you don't, out you go, no mat­ter how good a con­tri­bu­tion you make. Just look for your­self at what is tak­ing place, and you would un­der­stand why crick­et is the way it is lo­cal­ly and, by ex­ten­sion, re­gion­al­ly.

Hon­est­ly, I am fed up. Our ad­min­is­tra­tors have let us down, not just on Mon­day, but for a long, long time. They don't step aside; they blame oth­ers for their short­com­ings. So, who do we hold ac­count­able for this mad­ness? If it's King Sam­my, then who put him there? It's time for ac­tion, but we all know the CWI's mantra: "If you don't like it, get to hell out of here."

Let's be clear, we've gone be­yond "re­build­ing." This isn't just a mat­ter of chang­ing a few play­ers or swap­ping out a coach. This is a com­plete and ut­ter sys­tem col­lapse. We don't need a fresh coat of paint on a crum­bling wall; we need to de­mol­ish the whole house and start from the ground up, brick by painstak­ing brick. This re­quires more than a press re­lease or a half-day meet­ing with leg­ends; it de­mands a com­pre­hen­sive, long-term strate­gic plan with a five-year plan to re­build the re­gion­al red-ball game, a 10-year plan to re-es­tab­lish West In­dies as a top-tier na­tion, and a 20-year plan to forge a new lega­cy. Any­thing less is just an­oth­er stop­gap mea­sure, and we all know how that sto­ry ends.

The price of progress is high, but we are pay­ing for fail­ure. When will it end?

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.