West In­dies crick­et has again fal­tered, but alas, no one should be shocked or sur­prised by the con­tin­u­al be­tray­al of du­ty by those who pur­port to make de­ci­sions on be­half of over five mil­lion in­hab­i­tants of the re­gion.

The per­plex­ing re­al­i­ty is that, in try­ing to be­lat­ed­ly cor­rect one long out­stand­ing prob­lem, those with eyes to see and ears to hear have again de­fied log­ic in their pro­nounce­ments.

And there can be no fin­ger-point­ing by Crick­et West In­dies, as on Sat­ur­day they held their An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing where the in­cum­bents all held sway as Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent, both po­si­tions un­op­posed. There­fore, this would have been the op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­ci­sive de­ci­sion-mak­ing and pur­pose­ful re­solve; in­stead, it ap­pears that we may have re­ceived, col­lec­tive­ly as a re­gion, some “horse trad­ing“ (and those that know me un­der­stand that I love horse rac­ing in its truest form and not with twists and turns).

On Mon­day , in a re­lease full of pan­der­ing and padding and with some clear in­tent to smooth over rough feath­ers , Crick­et West In­dies (or Crick­et for cer­tain groups in the West In­dies ) sought to feign con­cern and care for the best of the sport in the re­gion by an­nounc­ing in one breath (my apolo­gies for three long wind­ed para­graphs ) that West In­dies Test Cap­tain Kraigg Braith­waite had ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion as cap­tain and in fact had hint­ed as much to them ear­li­er in the year, but to­geth­er all par­ties want­ed to en­sure a smoother tran­si­tion , so now was the right time .

If that was not laugh­able enough to make even the best co­me­di­ans in the re­gion stand up and take at­ten­tion, giv­en that our last se­ries was against Pak­istan, which we drew 1-1, and our next se­ries is against Aus­tralia in the Caribbean, then Trevor East­mond (Bar­ba­dos), Oliv­er Samuels (Ja­maica), Joseph Mar­cell (St Lu­cia), Le­an­dra Norville (An­tigua), Hen­ry Rod­ney (Guyana), Jumbie Jones (Guyana), Tom­my Joseph (Trinidad and To­ba­go) and Drunk­en Saint (Trinidad and To­ba­go) should all ap­ply for work now.

How­ev­er, the murky wa­ters get clear­er when we are fi­nal­ly told that Braith­waite, whose cap­tain­cy has long been iden­ti­fied by many who are so qual­i­fied to do so as “ lack­ing “ , “slow to re­act “ , “not vi­sion­ary“ and per­haps worst of all, “neg­a­tive and re­ac­tionary”. But the re­lease on Mon­day told us the fol­low­ing: this se­ries will be par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial, al­low­ing Brath­waite, who is two match­es shy of 100 Test match­es, to dou­ble down on his bat­ting with­out added re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

There­fore, Crick­et West In­dies, whether in­ten­tion­al­ly or not, have sug­gest­ed that with Braith­waite on 98 tests and there­fore two short of 100, he is fo­cus­ing on his bat­ting for, co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, the two-match se­ries. Can we then as­sume that Crick­et West In­dies al­ready knows the test team for June and that Braith­waite, for all his ob­vi­ous flaws and con­sis­tent­ly poor bat­ting speed and short­age of runs against all bowl­ing and weak­ness to gen­uine fast bowl­ing, has been “promised” a spot should he do the ho­n­ourable thing and re­sign? Some­thing is woe­ful­ly wrong with this.

Of course, all of this could be mut­ed if the West In­dies team's lone se­lec­tor and lone coach and sole team de­ci­sion-mak­er (king­mak­er, some are say­ing) Dar­ren Sam­my con­firmed this to Crick­et West In­dies in ad­vance, that Braith­waite is the first pick. Umm, I am just won­der­ing aloud if that in­stead should go to the next West In­dies cap­tain.

Braith­waite’s daw­dle-like style of bat­ting has an­gered many over the last few years. In fact, one for­mer West In­di­an play­er re­cent­ly cri­tiqued his bat­ting ap­proach to be the ex­am­ple and lead that caused the West In­dies to fal­ter in many Test match­es.

Here is Kraigg Brath­waite's Last 10 In­nings

TEST

2nd Test Vs Pak­istan 9 (19), 52 (74)

1st Test Vs Pak­istan 11 (17), 12 (13)

2nd Test Vs Bangladesh 43 (63) , 39 (129)

1st Test Vs Bangladesh 4 (38) , 23 (35)

2nd Test Vs South Africa 3 (19) , 25 (55)

1st Test Vs South Africa 35 (131) , 0 (3)

3rd Test Vs Eng­land 61 (86) , 0 (6)

2nd Test Vs Eng­land 48 (72) , 47 (48)

1st Test Vs Eng­land 6 (33) , 4 (26)

2nd Test Vs Aus­tralia 4 (25) , 16 (54)

That is 426 runs in 20 in­nings for an av­er­age of 21.3, and now it ap­pears West In­dies crick­et will re­ward him with two more tests so she can achieve 100 tests. How to­tal­ly ill-con­ceived, bi­ased and un­fair can this be by the West In­di­an au­thor­i­ties?

The next de­ci­sion may be less con­tro­ver­sial but cer­tain­ly ticks some crick­et box­es and may ac­tu­al­ly tick­le the fan­cy of some giv­en its ap­par­ent at­tempt to pos­si­bly ap­pease a dis­si­dent few giv­en their culi­nary taste and pro­fessed in­tent to ob­ject rather than con­cur.

Shai Hope, the cur­rent West In­dies One Day cap­tain, has been pro­mot­ed to T20 cap­tain as well, and while it can be ar­gued that the in­cum­bent Rov­man Pow­ell’s cap­tain­cy flaws were ob­vi­ous, giv­en the long life­line of Braith­waite , he may be cor­rect to as­sume that his treat­ment was less favourable , as he was forced out open­ly.

Shai Hope's T20 in­ter­na­tion­al cre­den­tials need some re­view be­cause his cap­tain­cy record is not su­perb, and it can­not be his wick­et­keep­ing, as there are many oth­er prob­a­ble West In­di­an wick­et­keep­ers that are of a high­er bat­ting stan­dard (strike rate and records ) than him.

At the mo­ment the 32-year-old has on­ly played 9 match­es in the In­di­an Pre­mier League, scor­ing 172 runs, and has nev­er been se­lect­ed since, hav­ing to play in the so-called less­er T20 world tour­na­ments.

And while his bat­ting record in One Day In­ter­na­tion­als is im­pres­sive, es­pe­cial­ly when he opened the in­nings, his de­ci­sion to stop open­ing the in­nings of late could raise ques­tions about his pref­er­ence for top-of-the-or­der bat­ting now. In­ter­est­ing­ly, Hope was ap­point­ed on 21st March, 2023, as one-day cap­tain and oblig­ed, scor­ing 128 not out; how­ev­er, since then to now, he has on­ly scored two more cen­turies.

Pow­ell, on the oth­er hand, jus­ti­fi­ably can feel hard done by, as he moved the T20 team from 9th to 3rd po­si­tion, and you sense there may be un­rest in the team as a re­sult of this das­tard­ly act.

There is al­so noth­ing in his One Day bat­ting lead­er­ship to sug­gest that his crick­et acu­men is bet­ter than Pow­ell's, and it may just be a bit of trad­ing places we are all wit­ness­ing with “Ed­die Mur­phy “in the stands rather than on cen­tre stage.

Hope­ful­ly the fact that Dar­ren Sam­my, it was an­nounced ear­li­er, has start­ed his all-en­com­pass­ing role on April 1st (All Fools Day) will not draw ter­ri­ble com­par­isons go­ing for­ward, but the thoughts on the ex­change not be­ing a re­al change in keep­ing some hap­py in crick­et still sad­ly per­vade West In­dies crick­et; on­ly time will tell if this is not an­oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive faux pas.