Tony Cozier

THE prolonged civil war, what former Jamaica prime minister P.J.Patterson refers to as “this internecine warfare”, is at an end.

Overshadowed, as was their previous meeting in the Caribbean, by a somewhat more important international sporting event, the third series in less than two and a half years between the West Indies and New Zealand carries special significance for the teams all the same.

In his regular column on the ESPNcricinfo website on May 2, former Australia captain Ian Chappell considered what is required to revive the flagging interest in Test cricket.

  By Tony Cozier   There is one immediately evident deficiency in the West Indies’ training squads of 20 for their three forthcoming home Tests against New Zealand and the additional nine for the High Performance Centre’s almost simultaneous series against Bangladesh ‘A’.

DENESH RAMDIN has been at the core of West Indies cricket long enough to be aware of the complexities he must confront as the new Test captain.

By Tony Cozier PRESSURE from high places in Barbados and Antigua and Barbuda and behind-the-scenes persuasion of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) are a couple of the reasons advanced for the West Indies Cricket Board’s reported review of its original choice of Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana for England’s three Tests next year.

-WICB cannot allow Richard Pybus’s plans to professionalize the regional first-class season go the way of the Patterson report   ANOTHER unsatisfactory West Indies first-class season ends this weekend.

  IT is the season of special anniversaries for two of cricket’s true giants, kindred spirits, both West Indian, both left-handers.

WHILE the high-flying T20 stars were in Dhaka, mounting their eventual anti-climatic defense of the world title joyously won in Colombo two years earlier, Darren Bravo and Keiran Powell were back in the Caribbean, watched by a couple of nut-sellers and a smattering of diehards in the understated first-class tournament, seeking to restore long held expectations that they are two future pillars of West Indies batting.

THE roller-coaster ride that was one of the exercises for the West Indies team on the one-week training camp in Florida last October is an apt metaphor for Darren Sammy’s captaincy.

From Tony Cozier SIR Garry Sobers  – the Right Excellent Sir Garfield St.

Provided they can turn their attention away from events in Bangladesh, and the encouraging warm-up results by both men’s and women’s teams in the World T20, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) directors were scheduled to discuss a vital issue at their meeting in Trinidad over the weekend.

INEVITABLY, the shorter the game, the more frenzied the tempo, the more exciting the action, the more unpredictable the outcome.

 By Tony Cozier AFTER the West Indies were routed by an innings in less than three days in their two Tendulkar farewell Tests in India last November, Clive Lloyd said they “looked drunk” on an overindulgence of Twenty20 cricket.

By Tony Cozier ONLY a couple of days after the administrative leaders of West Indies cricket spoke with heady optimism about the future, the team’s two Twenty20 internationals against Ireland at Sabina Park last Wednesday and Friday brought them back to the present, stark reality.

DESCRIBED by the West Indies Cricket Board as “the legendary Pakistan off-spinner”, Saqlain Mushtaq has been added to the team’s coaching staff for the couple of Twenty20s and the solitary One-Day International against Ireland in Jamaica at the end of the week.

Things haven’t gone to plan for either the West Indies or England as they prepare to contest the strange combination of three ODIs in Antigua and three Twenty20s in Barbados February 28 to March 15.

By Tony Cozier   However much we pound our fists and rightly rail against the brazen conspiracy between Australia, England and India to effectively hijack international cricket, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) is obliged to accept a galling reality.

They offered opportunities for Keiran Powell to entrench himself as the West Indies opening batsman as his palpable potential indicates that he should be.

Beaten and battered in two bruising campaigns, those West Indies players still standing finally stagger home this week with a bag full of questions to be asked and answered over what really went on in India and, especially, New Zealand.