Not for the first time there is turmoil in West Indies cricket. Indeed, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the regional game-at least at the level of the senior representative squad-is in tatters under the watch of the current West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA). Such has been the enduring nature of confrontations of one kind of the other that it is a wonder that the long-suffering fans have not yet come to the end of their patience.

The most highly-paid players ever in the history of West Indies cricket and, arguably, the greatest underachievers, are again at loggerheads with the administrative managers of the game here with money once again being central to the dispute, the latest incarnation of the WICB seemingly unable to arrive at a series of systems that would have forestalled the kind of international embarrassment occasioned by a players’ strike at the onset of what was supposed to have been a team-fortifying tournament.

Any search for a parallel in the modern history of the game is likely to turn up short-unless we cite the contretemps that deflowered the Zimbabwean Test team. Even so, however, the players and administrators there had the excuse of having had to exist in what was then an evidentially failed state where money was hardly worth the paper it was printed on and such was the threat of famine that the basic question was whether Zimbabwean sportsmen would continue to have enough to eat.

We note that the present pathetic happenings in West Indies cricket are taking place in the context of the International Cricket Committee’s General Manager for Cricket, Dave Richardson, having already pronounced that ’it is an important point that Test cricket should be played against teams that are at least competitive with each other. Ideally, you want to have the top teams playing against each other, maybe in a second division or lesser competition such as the Intercontinental Cup’’.

It is clearly not in our interest to set out to second-guess Mr Richardson but on the basis of the present rankings, arrived at strictly from scores on the playing fields it is not comforting to consider where in this proposed set-up the West Indies will end up. When we add to the overall total the parlous state of the West Indian game at the administrative level, the fear must be that our die will definitely be cast.

Those who have ears to hear and eyes to see should hear the rumblings in the wind and see the writing on the wall but on the basis of our past experiences who will blame us for believing that both the WICB and WIPA will remain blind and deaf to the current cricket realities.