Don’t worry. Be happy.

I mean, if our esteemed Prime Minister can assure us that every little thing will be alright economically in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary, why should we get tizzik over a less-than-ideal build-up to this morning’s first ball at Lord’s?

On the contrary, given the general pattern of preparation for any West Indian cricket assignment in recent years, expecting anything less than a resignation here, a late arrival there and a sound cut-tail in between is surely being unrealistic.

So Donald Peters’ departure from the office of CEO at the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), skipper Chris Gayle’s decision to stay on two extra days in South Africa and a ten-wicket drubbing inside three days at the hands of the England ’A’ team are actually welcome reassurance that, in a world of mutating viruses, increasingly poisonous assets and an Integrity Commission that barely has a quorum three days after being reactivated, at least there is one thing that remains the same.

Everybody beating the drum about Gayle’s supposed irresponsibility and dereliction of duty in choosing to arrive in London just two days before the first Test. But who authorised it? A WICB that has no authority and is essentially over a barrel after yet again failing to dot the ’i’s’ and cross the ’t’s’ in its continuing uneasy relationship with the players and, more precisely, a West Indies Players Association that is accustomed to being in the ascendancy after the dust has settled from any dispute.

Yet some of these same drum-beaters will switch to trumpeting the captain if he leads by example and the Caribbean side can manage to pull off a first Test victory since 1988 at the spiritual headquarters of the game.

Surely it shouldn’t be so. If Gayle is wrong, he’s wrong, whatever the result or his individual contribution.

But that is not the way we operate in a place when the end increasingly justifies the means. In fact, go ask any aspiring cricketer what he would do if faced with the option of the greater material riches of the Indian Premier League (IPL) or the infinitely greater prestige of Test cricket and you’ll get a real wake-up call about contemporary prioritisation.

And this is not a West Indian thing exclusively, not when you have so many big-name cricketing hypocrites across the globe who were apparently on the verge of collapse from burnout, that is until the seemingly bottomless money pit of the IPL generated a surge of boundless energy from almost nowhere, not to mention a fundamental reorientation of perspectives on the game itself to the extent that Savannah-style vupping for 20 overs is now peddled by them as an experience every bit as intense, intriguing and complicated as Dostoevsky’s ’Crime and Punishment’.

So if Gayle is guilty of looking after number one, he’s only right in tune with the tenor of our times.

Much has also been made of the ten-wicket thrashing at Derby, as if that is an automatic precursor to what will transpire over the next three or four days. But warm-ups are just that-warm-ups. Nobody wants to be hammered from pillar to post ahead of the real thing. Yet if those opportunities are utilised properly and the lessons of the experience learnt quickly, the result actually becomes inconsequential if the team is better prepared for the serious business of the tour.

On the last South African campaign, almost everyone was bracing for the worst after the tourists crashed to a similar ten-wicket defeat, also in less than three days, to South Africa’s ’A’ side in East London on the eve of the first Test. Yet Gayle smashed Dale Steyn to all parts on the first morning in Port Elizabeth and the West Indies never relinquished the initiative, completing an historic 128-run victory on the fourth evening at St George’s Park.

That doesn’t mean the same will necessarily follow at Lord’s. But hopefully you get the point about there being no such thing as the normal course of things, certainly when it comes to West Indies cricket.

What all three warm-up matches have shown is that Devon Smith should not have been persisted with and Dale Richards is a gamble that won’t pay off, leaving Lendl Simmons as the likely opening partner alongside his captain when the right-hander probably would have slotted in better at number four between Ramnaresh Sarwan and the ever-reliable Shivnarine Chanderpaul.

That opens up the prospect of one of the two all-rounders-Darren Sammy and Dave Bernard Jr-filling a spot that should properly be occupied by Dwayne Bravo, who, ironically, turns out today in the sky blue of the Mumbai Indians against the Deccan Chargers in Centurion instead of donning the burgundy cap of the West Indies in North London.

We know all about the medical rationale about the player not subjecting his recently repaired ankle to the extended rigours of Test cricket. Still, if observers remain convinced that there is much more in the mortar than just the pestle in this matter, it’s only because they have grown accustomed to things being not always as they seem in the murky yet bacchanalian soap opera of the West Indian game.

Still, we will follow every ball, some hoping for the best, others wanting the worst just to prove their point. But after years of serious licks, the naysayers can keep on crying big water.

I’m going with the PM-illogical blip and all-on this one.

fazeer2001@hotmail.com