Many of you must be ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed in the per­for­mance of the West In­dies team in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Test se­ries against Eng­land.

Fresh from the morale-boost­ing eu­pho­ria of their lone vic­to­ry against Aus­tralia in the fi­nal Test back in Jan­u­ary, hopes were high that the Ma­roon Army would car­ry that mo­men­tum in­to the Eng­lish sum­mer and put up a spir­it­ed fight against Eng­land. How­ev­er, the re­al­i­ty was a far cry from such op­ti­mism, and you would not be fault­ed if you had ex­pect­ed bet­ter, more com­pet­i­tive per­for­mances from Kraigg Brath­waite's team.

It's no se­cret that Eng­lish con­di­tions pose a unique chal­lenge for West In­dies bats­men. They are to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from the hard pitch­es and sun­ny, hu­mid weath­er in Aus­tralia in Jan­u­ary. Did the Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) board tru­ly be­lieve that this in­ex­pe­ri­enced squad was ca­pa­ble of win­ning or draw­ing the se­ries against a con­fi­dent Eng­land squad in Eng­lish con­di­tions?

First­ly, out­side of the first class sea­son in the re­gion in March/April, the ma­jor­i­ty of the play­ers were not play­ing first class crick­et (the red ball ver­sion of the game), so it should come as no sur­prise that the West In­dies bats­men looked out of their depth. In a se­ries that was card­ed for 15 days of crick­et, West In­dies was ham­mered three times by their op­po­nents in just nine days. Do the pow­ers that be re­al­ly care, or is it just tak­en for grant­ed and a feel­ing of res­ig­na­tion ac­cept­ed that the West In­dies will lose?

So, let’s move on to an­oth­er chap­ter in the sor­ry lega­cy of West In­dies crick­et. West In­dies played two Tests against Aus­tralia in Jan­u­ary, and six months lat­er, they played an­oth­er three Tests. Let’s be re­al­is­tic - the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) does not care about West In­dies crick­et, un­like in the 70s and 80s when, as David Rud­der’s lyrics go in the West In­dies an­them, "we ruled the crick­et world". The team was in de­mand, play­ing maybe 15 or more Test match­es in a year. Now, who re­al­ly cares if West In­dies plays six or 12 Test match­es an­nu­al­ly spread six months apart?

Let us re­turn to the tour that was des­tined to fail. When you view the num­ber of Test match ap­pear­ances for four of the first six bats­men be­fore the se­ries be­gan, Mikyle Louis: 0, Kirk McKen­zie: 3, Al­ick Athanaze: 4 and Kavem Hodge: 2, there is a grand to­tal of nine Tests be­tween them so play­ing in for­eign con­di­tions where the ball is mov­ing ap­pre­cia­bly in the air, it was al­ways go­ing to be a strug­gle. The prepa­ra­tion for this tour, or rather the ab­ject lack there­of, was noth­ing short of far­ci­cal. A soli­tary week of train­ing and a three-day warm-up match against young­sters at Beck­en­ham hard­ly con­sti­tutes ad­e­quate prepa­ra­tion for a Test se­ries against a for­mi­da­ble op­po­nent such as Eng­land.

Sure­ly, these play­ers need­ed some ex­tend­ed warm-up games to ful­ly un­der­stand what they were fac­ing. Even the leg­endary Clive Lloyd's team, blessed with the likes of Gor­don Greenidge, Vi­vian Richards and Alvin Kallicha­ran, didn’t take such a cav­a­lier ap­proach when they came to Eng­land to play a five-Test se­ries. Clive Lloyd's ‘in­vin­ci­ble’ West In­dies would have spent weeks ac­cli­ma­tis­ing and hon­ing their skills, play­ing a se­ries of games against coun­ty op­po­si­tion where they would mas­sacre the coun­ty bowlers. In­deed, it is a stark re­minder of the gulf that has formed be­tween the glo­ry days of West In­dies crick­et and the present.

I at­tend­ed the first Test match at Lord’s as I want­ed to see first­hand how the team would han­dle the con­di­tions. His­to­ry would show the game end­ed one hour in­to the third day, and some of the fans were not on­ly dis­ap­point­ed in the quick out­come of the game, but you could hear the pity in the voic­es of the Eng­lish fans com­ment­ing on the de­cline of West In­dies crick­et. I was amazed at the sell­out crowds at Lord’s; even on that fate­ful third day with West In­dies start­ing the day on 79 for 6, Lord’s was packed. I sup­pose it was Jim­my An­der­son’s farewell, and the fans want­ed to send him off in style.

I feel it for the play­ers as they would have gone to Eng­land with a cer­tain lev­el of con­fi­dence but not with a firm un­der­stand­ing of the mag­ni­tude of their task, with, as I sug­gest­ed, prepa­ra­tion that could on­ly be con­sid­ered a joke. Even the two most ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers could not help the cause as cap­tain Brath­waite scored 166 runs from six in­nings, and Ja­son Hold­er scored 155 runs from six in­nings and took on­ly three wick­ets for the se­ries. Com­pare that to the top two Eng­lish play­ers: Joe Root with 291 runs from three in­nings and Ben Stokes with 192 runs from five in­nings with one not out and five wick­ets. The play­ers un­doubt­ed­ly bear re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their per­for­mances, but the sys­temic is­sues with­in West In­dies crick­et can­not be ig­nored.

No­body seems to “ral­ly” around the West In­dies team, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ICC. The West In­dies needs heavy fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment if its test crick­et is to sur­vive. Un­der the ICC's new rev­enue-dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el, In­dia is set to re­ceive a whop­ping US$230 mil­lion per year be­tween 2024-27; Eng­land will re­ceive US$41 mil­lion and US$38 mil­lion to Aus­tralia. The West In­dies is pro­ject­ed to re­ceive US$28 mil­lion, so it is no won­der the team can on­ly train for a week and play a fete match be­fore the Eng­land Test match se­ries. It is a dis­grace that the game's gov­ern­ing body shows such lit­tle re­gard for the re­gion that once dom­i­nat­ed world crick­et. It's time for a change. The CWI must chal­lenge the ICC on this dis­par­i­ty in its fund­ing. It's time for CWI to fight for its play­ers, de­mand fair treat­ment from the ICC, and in­vest in the fu­ture of West In­dies crick­et. How is crick­et meant to be­come a glob­al sport if one team gets more than the oth­er teams com­bined? Yes, I un­der­stand that In­dia gen­er­ates the most rev­enue for the ICC, but this skewed fund­ing mod­el is un­sus­tain­able and does not serve crick­et as a glob­al sport. This fi­nan­cial chasm is re­flect­ed on the field, where the gulf in tal­ent and prepa­ra­tion is painful­ly ev­i­dent time and time again.

I feel it for the play­ers as much more can be done for them and to en­cour­age oth­er gift­ed play­ers in­to the Test are­na. I am al­so not naive as I am well aware that they, at times, played some poor crick­et. The bowl­ing, while show­ing flash­es of bril­liance, lacked con­sis­ten­cy. The Eng­lish bowlers, with the ex­cep­tion of An­der­son and Wood, are hard­ly world-beat­ers. Yet, they man­aged to ex­ploit the West In­dies' frail­ties with ruth­less ef­fi­cien­cy. Eng­land bowled with a plan and at­tacked with very few loose balls be­ing bowled, while the West In­dies bowlers bowled too many loose balls and were pun­ished every time they strayed in line or length.

The road to re­demp­tion for the West In­dies be­gins at Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain as the first Test against a very good South African team starts on Wednes­day (Au­gust 7). The play­ers will feel more con­fi­dent at home, and I ex­pect a bet­ter per­for­mance from them. I hope the crowds, like in Eng­land, come out in their num­bers to ral­ly around the West In­dies.

One can on­ly hope for the team to re­dis­cov­er its fight­ing spir­it and give the home crowd some­thing to cheer about. The Oval needs to be a fortress, a place where the West In­dies can re­claim some of their lost pride. If no one in au­thor­i­ty cares about the play­ers, per­haps the fans will come out and show some love to the play­ers. Fans must ral­ly around the team. Fill the stands, make some noise, and show these play­ers that there are peo­ple who still be­lieve in them. Be­cause if we don't, who will? I am cer­tain they will show some fight and pedi­gree. See you at the Oval on Wednes­day!

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.