THE West Indies cricket team have embarked on a tour of England, which will see them playing three Test matches, a solitary T20 match and five One Day Internationals. It is a formidable fixture, given the team’s underwhelming performance back home during the just- concluded series against Pakistan and its poor showing on overseas tours over the years.

The West Indies will also be coming up against a strong English line-up on home soil, which recently wrapped up a series against South Africa beating them 3–1, their first home series win against South Africa since 1998. They also won the ODI series 2-1, as well as the T20 series 2-1.
It is no secret that the West Indies team has had a woeful overseas record over the last decade and more, in three Tests against the top-ranked team in Test cricket.  And as if facing the third-ranked test team in the world in their home conditions wasn’t tough enough, West Indies have been fielding for the longest while a team of youngsters — many of whom have not yet conquered the game at the regional level. Key players such as Darren Bravo and Marlon Samuels are not on the tour due to various reasons involving Cricket West Indies (CWI).

Undoubtedly, there have been some positive signs so far on the tour with the team declaring twice and bowling out their opponents in a fixture against country side Derbyshire, which ended on Sunday. In the game, West Indies amassed 427/3d & 327/6d in the two innings they batted. Notwithstanding this effort in the warm-up match, their game against the national team would be a different challenge.
Against the background of all of this is that the West Indies are in a race to qualify for the 2019 World Cup. Recently, the cricket board offered “temporary amnesty” to the players who do not fit their selection criteria in order to have them available to play ODIs. This could pave the way for the return of players such as Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard, Sunil Narine, and Samuel Badree for the tour down under following the Test matches.

CWI has had a stringent policy of picking only those players who are active in the domestic one-day tournament for 50-over internationals — a rule which rendered many of the key players ineligible as they would opt to ply their trade around the globe playing T20 cricket. This tour of England, as much as it would give an indication as to the progress of the Test team  under Coach Stuart Law, it is more about ensuring that the Caribbean men pick up valuable points which would guarantee them a place in the World Cup – the game’s global showpiece which the West Indies has won twice.  It would be the collective wish of every Caribbean fan that the team succeeds — ensuring its place among the top nations that will compete in the tournament scheduled to be hosted by England and Wales, from 30 May to 15 July, 2019. This will be the 12th Cricket World Cup competition, and the fifth time it will be held in England and Wales.

For a nation that won the first two competitions in 1975 and 1979, it continues to trouble many endearing fans that the team risks missing out playing in the game’s marquee tournament and this has to do principally with one issue — the crisis of governance of cricket in the region. This has been a major factor in the decline in the fortunes of our team. Relations between the board and the players on the one hand and between the board and the support staff on the other hand, have deteriorated to the point where the public is frequently treated to public quarrels among the various sides — the latest involving Darren Bravo and the President Dave Cameron. But the crisis has also been exacerbated by the attitude of the top players who often place money before service to the Region. In an era of boundless individualism, our cricketers have not been shy of openly showing preference for playing in the financially lucrative private leagues, rather than for the West Indies. We are never going to improve if our senior players do not participate in the local and regional competitions — such participation is critical to lifting the standard of our domestic cricket. Similarly, if we do not make our boards more accountable to the people of the Region by democratising their structures and practices, there will always be tension, which in turn will impede progress.