Tony Cozier

COLOMBO– West Indies’ head coach Ottis Gibson isn’t disturbed by Thursday’s eventual decision to defer the scheduled limited-overs series against Sri Lanka to late January.

Otis Gibson and Courtney Browne have spent as much time over the past month in Sri Lanka experiencing the effects of global warming on what should be the end of the annual monsoon season as on what their principal mission was meant to be.

The West Indies, overwhelming underdogs before the bell, returned to their corner after the first round in Galle pleased to be ahead of points.

COLOMBO– On all available evidence, it was bound to be an embarrassing mismatch.

COLOMBO – It is ironic, if not surprising, that Shane Shillingford should be reported for a suspected illegal bowling action in the home island of Muttiah Muralitheran, the most successful and famous of all bent-elbow bowlers the game has known.

-Second to last ICC ranked team the West Indies take on  number three ranked Sri Lanka from tomorrow very much underprepared and with a new look team and a new captain to boot As the skies opened up in Colombo over the past few days, flooding streets and the outfield at the Sinhalese Sports Club ground, the West Indies cricketers would have come to fully appreciate the age-old adage that it never rains but it  pours.

When he chaired the West Indies selection panel a dozen or so years ago, Wes Hall spoke of the “mental discomfiture” that comes with the post.

The in-word in West Indies cricket at the moment is “tough”.

It was inevitable from the year the first formal domestic Twenty20 tournament in England proved a rousing success that the game’s briefest format would create a dilemma for administrators and players.

Unsurprisingly, the attention on the retainer contracts offered by West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) for the coming year has focused on the few high-profile players not granted one and the two, possibly soon to be three, who have chosen to go their own way.

Here we go again in the interminable battle for control of West Indies cricket.

Not quite a year ago, something remarkable happened on the far-off cricket stadiums of India.

– The West Indies Cricket Board is once again getting tough about physical fitness in much the same way as the Pat Rousseau administration did several years ago.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) and the Federation of International Cricketers’ Association (FICA) have jointly sent an unequivocal proposition to the two organisations responsible for the most critical aspects of West Indies cricket.

A West Indies team is ready for an international engagement. Suddenly, the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) notices something in the players’ contracts not to its liking.

– Hendy Springer recommends that the WICB persist with the A team tours since it serves a “serious purpose” Cozier on Sunday It lasted just a week short of three months, touched four countries spread across the planet and included international matches against five different opponents.

The theme of despair running through West Indies cricket for a decade and more has never been more blatant than in the current series against South Africa.

Cozier on SundayWest Indies cricket continues to self destruct. Given the damage inflicted in the past couple of weeks, on and off the field, it seems to be getting ever more proficient at it.

As West Indies head coach, the latest in the wheel from which eight have spun off in the past 14 years, Ottis Gibson is more intimately involved with the players on a day-to-day basis than anyone else.

The first regional Twenty20 tournament since the lucrative Stanford Series ended with the imprisonment of its sponsor in the United States on “massive fraud” charges has been scheduled by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) from July 22 to 31.