By inadvertent, yet timely coincidence, the directors of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) hold their quarterly meeting in St Lucia on December 12 and 13, in the middle of the first Test against Australia in a series long written off as embarrassingly one-sided.
Their first order of business is to come to a position on the Caricom review panel’s report on its governance; WICB president Dave Cameron was slated to meet on the issue with the head of the Caricom sub-committee on cricket, Grenada Prime Minister Keith Mitchell, on Friday. Since the report recommended the board be “immediately dissolved and all current members resign,” to be replaced by an interim board, their response is predictable.
As potentially critical as it is to the future of the WICB, the continuing, and seemingly escalating, weakness of the team requires the directors’ equally urgent attention. It has caused such overall anguish that it brought an emotional reaction from Sir Garry Sobers, by consensus the greatest of all cricketers, at a media conference during the team’s recent tour of Sri Lanka.
The Australian media, if not Cricket Australia itself, based the West Indies’ dismal record in proposing more competitive New Zealand replace them for the showpiece Tests in Melbourne and Sydney. Because of already set international itineraries, it was impractical but it did reflect widespread opinion.
The loss by 10 wickets in their solitary warm-up match in Brisbane to a Cricket Australia XI with an average age of 21 and comprising six players on first-class debut reinforced the fear over the relevance of the three Tests.
The West Indies have lost all four of their Tests since June, by nine wickets and 277 runs to Australia in the Caribbean and by innings and six runs and 72 runs to Sri Lanka. There were four individual hundreds against, none for. Last week’s result in Brisbane has been the most humiliating of all.
The directors need to hear from Cameron and equally from Richard Pybus,
