Tony Cozier

When Richard Pybus, the new director of cricket, goes about his promised review of the systems designed to produce international players for the West Indies, a good place to start would be with the Indian example.

West Indies cricket has repeatedly endured horrific times over the past two decades.

OBSCURED by the distractions of the current double-tour from hell, a significant appointment by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has slipped under the radar.

WHERE do the shocking three-day, innings defeats in India and New Zealand leave West Indies cricket?

Every so often, a massive innings carries appreciably more significance than the simple numbers.

Did those couple of specially arranged Tendulkar Tests in India really happen?

One sign among the abundance at the Wankedhe Stadium last week grieving over the passing of Sachin Tendulkar – for that is what it seemingly was to his millions of Indian disciples – bore a simple, unanimously held sentiment.

As sporting humiliations go, the West Indies latest, that ended yesterday with their second loss to India by an innings within three days, was up there with the all-out 54 at Lord’s and the two-day defeat at Headingley in 2000, the year that they should have celebrated the 50th anniversary of their first Test victory in England.

More than any other team, the West Indies have found an assortment of ways of turning wine into water, rather than the other way round that was a specialty of their great predecessors of the 1980s.

By Tony Cozier From the era when cricket’s first superstar, W.G.

CAMPS, of one sort or another, have become essential for most sporting teams preparing for competition.

By Tony Cozier THE imminent retirement of Sachin Tendulkar after 24 years accumulating more runs and more hundreds in more international matches than any cricketer in history has revived the constant debate over who is the greatest batsman of his generation.

As passionate as we are, it is still impossible for West Indians to fully comprehend the intensity with which the people of the second most populous nation on earth are gripped by cricket, a game bequeathed to their widely diverse people by their one-time colonial overlords.

West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) president Dave Cameron was even more upbeat than usual over the decision at last weekend’s directors’ meeting in Kingston to award the regional Super50 competition – all of it – to Trinidad and Tobago for the next three years.

THE West Indies’ back-to-back tours of India (by the ‘A’ team presently underway to be immediately followed by the seniors’ attendance at the hurriedly arranged celebration of Sachin Tendulkar’s 200th Test) offer a welcome return to the longer game for the top players and a chance for the reserves to stake their claims for promotion.

By Tony Cozier   FAR from simplifying the game’s most contentious playing condition, the chief executives of the International Cricket Council (ICC) member boards complicated it further at their gathering in Dubai last week.

There has never been a better time to be a West Indies cricketer.

By Tony Cozier   THE West Indies’ sudden summons from India for two Tests and three ODIs there, starting in late October, has more to do with one cricketer, as eminent as he is, and the petulance of sensitive officials rather than cricket itself.

It has all the makings of a hangover on the morning after Mashramani.

THE exquisite assortment of bouncy cheerleaders have gyrated for the last time.