Af­ter my last col­umn re­gard­ing the West In­dies tour of Bangladesh, my email in­box de­liv­ered a scream­er—not from a fast bowler, but from a thor­ough­ly fed-up West In­dies fan/fel­low writer. This was a fan hang­ing up his spec­ta­tor's and writer’s hat, not with a sigh, but with a mighty fling. His note, while not copied in full (and per­haps mer­ci­ful­ly so), con­firmed my sus­pi­cion: af­ter years of rid­ing the West In­dies crick­et emo­tion­al roller­coast­er, many are sim­ply get­ting off the ride.

The email start­ed by com­pli­ment­ing my tenac­i­ty in con­tin­u­ing to write about West In­dies crick­et. He said, “I have done my fair share of writ­ing and have now re­tired. I have hung up my bat, gloves, and pads and thrown away the ball and my pen. CWI re­al­ly takes us for a bunch of id­iots, and af­ter years of run­ning down West In­dies crick­et, Shal­low will ride out in­to the sun­set on No­vem­ber 27th when he will win his seat in St Vin­cent. Our own Bas­sarath will con­tin­ue the game of mu­si­cal chairs, and when he has failed, the Ja­maican, whose name has slipped me, will take over. So ba­si­cal­ly, I am leav­ing you on your own – not one res­ig­na­tion – at least fire the wa­ter boy!” The frus­tra­tion is pal­pa­ble, aimed square­ly at the top. When a fan reach­es the point of de­mand­ing the dis­missal of the wa­ter boy, you know the emo­tion­al well has run dry. I would ex­pect he is one of thou­sands of fans in the re­gion who are com­plete­ly fed up with the ad­min­is­tra­tion of West In­dies crick­et; how­ev­er, un­like many fans, he put pen to pa­per and let his feel­ings be vent­ed. But, with noth­ing hap­pen­ing, he, like so many oth­ers, just flung his hands in the air and sim­ply gave up. A com­pelling no­tion, but sad­ly, I can’t do that – I'm af­flict­ed with a stub­born loy­al­ty. I know those ad­min­is­tra­tors do not re­al­ly care about the fans and what they think, as if they did, changes would have been made a while ago.

We seem to go through the same thing over and over and ex­pect a dif­fer­ent re­sult. Of course, the hi­er­ar­chy will no doubt point to the 3-0 T20 se­ries win in Bangladesh as pos­i­tive proof that "things are chang­ing". While I am over­joyed by the vic­to­ry and ex­treme­ly hap­py for the play­ers, aren’t the West In­dies at the T20 for­mat ex­pect­ed to get a vic­to­ry over Bangladesh? I ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that a sin­gle se­ries vic­to­ry, even one with a clev­er­ly ap­plied coat of white­wash, does not mag­i­cal­ly erase years of ad­min­is­tra­tive sab­o­tage. As a sea­soned ob­serv­er, I know bet­ter than to con­fuse a mo­men­tary mi­rage of com­pe­tence with a gen­uine change in the desert land­scape. We've been down this op­ti­mistic path be­fore, and no­body who has suf­fered through the past two decades is will­ing to be fooled again by the fleet­ing high of a T20 win against Bangladesh. I am sim­ply prac­tis­ing his­tor­i­cal scep­ti­cism—a nec­es­sary trait when fol­low­ing West In­dies crick­et.

The de­f­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess in West In­dies crick­et is cur­rent­ly a won­der­ful­ly elas­tic con­cept. Los­ing the ODI se­ries 2-1 but win­ning the T20 se­ries 3-0 means let’s now heap praise on King Sam­my. All you need­ed was a prop­er mind­set, and look what hap­pened, boom! Vic­to­ry at last. If the West In­dies had lost the T20 se­ries, what would have changed? My ed­u­cat­ed guess, and one I share with the frus­trat­ed fan: ab­solute­ly noth­ing. It would have been busi­ness as usu­al.

Full of this new­found Bangladesh-fu­elled con­fi­dence (as Cap­tain Shai Hope de­clared), the West In­dies have gone on to New Zealand. Let me say from the out­set, I have a whole lot of time for Shai Hope; he must be the most frus­trat­ed man on the plan­et af­ter Joshua Da Sil­va and Amir Jan­goo. When Hope fails, the West In­dies of­ten fol­low, as he con­tin­ues to take the bur­den of the bat­ting on his shoul­ders. Yes, I will ad­mit he gets sup­port from the oth­er bats­men at times, but in the back of his mind, when he goes out to bat, he must be think­ing that he can’t fail, as if he doesn’t make runs, his team could be in trou­ble. He must al­so have a calm­ing in­flu­ence on the rest of his team. Even when he ad­dress­es the me­dia, he is log­i­cal in his think­ing and knows what he has to achieve.

Back to the New Zealand tour, where two T20 in­ter­na­tion­als have been played so far. True to form, the West In­dies had to turn both games in­to thrillers; they nev­er seem to want to do any­thing easy. In the first game, chas­ing a seem­ing­ly un­der-par 164/6, New Zealand were 107/9 with 20 balls left and 58 need­ed. West In­dies’ vic­to­ry cruise quick­ly turned in­to a hor­ror movie, with the last pair of skip­per Mitchell Sant­ner and Ja­cob Duffy putting on 50 runs, with num­ber 11 Duffy fac­ing one ball out of the 20. The West In­dies sur­vived by 7 runs. It was the equiv­a­lent of a vil­lain com­ing back to life af­ter the cred­its roll. At the end, Sant­ner left the field dis­ap­point­ed, but what an ef­fort.

In the sec­ond game, the ta­bles turned, and it was not the West In­dies who were shak­ing this time. Chas­ing 208, the equa­tion be­came a hi­lar­i­ous long shot: 115 runs re­quired off 43 balls.

Yet, they fought back, need­ing 53 off 19, and even­tu­al­ly lost by just 3 runs with 2 wick­ets re­main­ing. They turned a lost cause in­to an ag­o­nis­ing near miss. The bat­ting has been good with­out be­ing spec­tac­u­lar, and to­geth­er with Hope, Pow­ell, Chase, and down the or­der, Shep­herd and Forde have been good. The huge dis­ap­point­ment for me so far has been Bran­don King. With his form com­plete­ly van­ish­ing, the for­got­ten man, Amir Jan­goo, has to be giv­en an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty. But in line with the na­ture of the West In­dies' re­cent team se­lec­tions, King will prob­a­bly play the next game (Sat­ur­day, 8.15 pm) and score a cen­tu­ry. I wish him well, even as I ques­tion the log­ic.

The bowl­ing, on the oth­er hand, has been ex­cel­lent. Jay­den Seales had a bad sec­ond game but was su­perb in the first game, scalp­ing 3 for 32, strong­ly sup­port­ed by Ros­ton Chase with 3 for 26, while Akeal Ho­sein on­ly had 1 over for 4. Matthew Forde is back and bowled and bat­ted well in the sec­ond game. Seales and Ho­sein did not do well in game num­ber 2, but I ex­pect both to bounce back.

The West In­dies have a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to win this T20 se­ries, as New Zealand have a few in­juries to some of their key play­ers. Af­ter these 2 games, the West In­dies would have be­come more fa­mil­iar with the con­di­tions, as they are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from the con­di­tions in Bangladesh. How­ev­er, some of the new play­ers for New Zealand would be keen to show their se­lec­tors what they have, as they would be look­ing to im­press for fu­ture in­ter­na­tion­als to be played. Let us hope the right team with the form play­ers will be se­lect­ed. Let’s not dream of think­ing the hosts can be beat­en in their own back­yard 4-1, shall we? If so, dream on; that's just invit­ing the crick­et gods to laugh hys­ter­i­cal­ly.

Be­fore clos­ing, re­mem­ber that an­oth­er cru­cial dream is very much alive!

On Thurs­day, 13th No­vem­ber, Trinidad and To­ba­go march­es on­to the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um pitch to face Ja­maica in what promis­es to be an elec­tric, do-or-die World Cup qual­i­fi­er.

This is more than a game; it's a must-win mis­sion to keep T&T’s hopes soar­ing. The team needs you, as we keep our dream of qual­i­fy­ing for the 2026 World Cup alive.

Be there, be loud, and let's turn the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in­to a fortress of na­tion­al be­lief.

In the mean­time, my fel­low frus­trat­ed West In­dies fans and read­ers, un­like the ad­min­is­tra­tors, we sim­ply can­not af­ford to stop car­ing. And to every fed-up fan still read­ing this, you’re not alone… yet.

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.