WRITING about top-class sporting personalities is always much more gratifying than berating mostly useless politicians who are so taken up in their own hype that they can’t change their self-serving ways.

Sportsmen and women deserve our admiration for all the sweat and sacrifice they put in out of the limelight while honing their skills, and those that achieve their goals are true role models for the nation’s youngsters, who don’t really have many exemplars in this slack society of ours.

So we should always commend and appreciate the efforts of the likes of Hasely Crawford, Jean Pierre, Roger Gibbon, Brian Lara, Dwight Yorke, Ato Boldon, Emile Ramsammy, Stephen Ames, George Bovell III, Daren Ganga, Richard Thompson and the many other national heroes too numerous to mention who have made us proud to be from Trinidad and Tobago over the years.

With their accomplishments in the world’s arenas they offer us respite from the lousy leaders who have betrayed our trust and done nothing more than make themselves comfortable and corrupt at our expense.

But now, unfortunately, there are two sporting entities making a mockery of our uninhibited loyalty and holding us up to ridicule from all our rivals.

That could only be the West Indies Cricket Board and the West Indies Players Association, both of whom, quite frankly, have been long overrated and have sadly put themselves right alongside the blowhard politicians who have spoilt all they survey in most parts of the Caribbean.

There is no right or wrong in this sorry spectacle which has occupied the back pages of the newspapers for more than two weeks, just a pair of lame-brain, egotistical authorities who really need to step aside and let someone else sort out the mess they have produced.

The less said about the WICB the better because they have been tripping over themselves for years, with one bungling administrative foul-up after another.

Those running West Indies cricket are so bad that they actually make the team on the field of play look good, which says a lot because those who wear the Windies colours haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory in recent times, starting with a captain who is often more suited to a fete match squad than being among the game’s elite, but then that’s another story.

The players have got away with murder for years at the hands of the inept Board, which should long ago have devised a system where those out in the middle are paid for performance and we wouldn’t now have to suffer and cringe in our seats at the sight of one dismal showing after another.

Instead, the players have gotten too big for their boots and sometimes hardly put out the required effort to make themselves competitive against opponents who often play with a lot more pride and passion.

Think about it, how many current West Indies cricketers would you pay your hard-earned money to go and see? Dwayne Bravo, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan...

But now there are a few budding talents who have yet to make their international debuts, or others who got that far but have now run afoul of irrational selectors...and that’s also another story.

My point is that while the WICB accuse the players of strike action and breach of contract and WIPA countered that they don’t have contracts and haven’t have had any for some time, somewhere in Central Trinidad a 19-year-old schoolboy whose lifelong dream has been to play for the West Indies, is left to rue the day industrial relations replaced cricket scores in the sports pages.

Yes, Adrian Barath would probably have played for the West Indies for free. Instead, his well-paid, in some cases overpaid, teammates decided they were withdrawing their labour, making themselves even more insignificant than they have already become in a region which once put its players on pedestals and worshipped the ground they walked on.

Poor Barath was already in St Vincent on July 7, counting down the hours and hoping that his name would be in the starting XI for the first Test against Bangladesh at Arnos Vale Playing Field when WIPA’s big noise Dinanath Ramnarine announced the players’ decision to sit out the series.

Barath had to quietly pack his kit and find his way back to Trinidad, his dream shattered, while someone far less deserving got the opportunity to play for the Windies.

And what about Ravi Rampaul who has been begging for the opportunity to prove that he is a lot more than a limited overs specialist and could hold his own in the cut and thrust of Test cricket. And Jamaican pacer Andrew Richardson, who has also been longing for the day he would get his chance at the highest level of the game.

Now you tell me how any good could possibly come out of this whole sad situation, especially when a B-grade squad is left to represent the West Indies and loses to the worst country in Test cricket.

WICB president Julian Hunte and Dinanath Ramnarine should hang their heads in shame that together and apart they have reduced the West Indies to this tragic state where there are no winners, only losers.

And even the politicians are having a laugh at their incompetence.