THE West Indies have managed to qualify for next year’s cricket showpiece in England after an intense fight among the minnows of the game in Zimbabwe.
As tempted as we are to downplay the significance of them emerging as the top team in the tournament, all cricket lovers of the Caribbean would have breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Windies sneaked through, compliments of the Duckworth/Lewis system earlier this week.

“A win is a win,” many followers of the game have argued, but for those who have been ardent fans of West Indies cricket, it was painful to watch the two-time winners of the World Cup battling it out with non-test playing nations for a spot in World Cup 2019. Worse still, we were at risk of being eliminated by Scotland, if the showers did not descend on the Harare Sports Club Ground on Tuesday.

Enough has been said about the state of the game in the Caribbean and the administration and for those who held out hope, this tournament was proof that both the sport and the administration need to be revamped if ever we are going to reclaim our place among the top teams of the world. During the preliminary stage of the tournament, comments to the effect that it would be best if the West Indies did not quality were heard. Many also predicted a first-round knockout of the tournament next year, among others. These were sentiments from a weary fan base that has grown impatient and carefree.
The crisis in the governance of cricket in the Region 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. Clearly, the present leadership has failed the Region and should be removed. But as we have seen in the past, a mere change of personnel has done nothing to stop the rot. Here in Guyana, we have a board which is unrepresentative of the country and is not accountable to anybody outside of itself. We have the tragedy of a small clique of governors which have been entrenched in power because there have not been any proper elections since 2009. Neither the West Indies Cricket Board (now Cricket West Indies) nor governments have thus far been able to settle the impasse. In the meantime, Guyana’s cricket, as is the case with West Indies cricket as a whole, continues to decline.
But all is not lost for amid the gloom, skipper Jason Holder has been a stand-out both with bat and ball so far in the qualifiers; Kemar Roach has found some rhythm – – two key men in the team’s bowling department. Young Guyanese Keemo Paul has shown tremendous promise as well as his countryman, Shemron Hetmyer, although the manner of his dismissal in the Zimbabwe game has caused a few heads to turn.

It has been over 22 years since the West Indies were dethroned as the champions of world cricket. An entire generation has grown up knowing and thinking of the West Indies as world beaters in a sport that holds pride of place in the cultural psyche of our society. This is in stark contrast to the previous generation, which was socialised in a Caribbean which dominated the sport for almost two decades — the longest any team has dominated a team sport. Here was the Caribbean, the smallest Region in terms of land-space and the poorest in terms of economic indicators, beating the world and controlling the content of a game which was originally intended to subjugate its peoples. The West Indies cricket team of that time showed the world that when the playing field is even, our people could compete and win, despite our structural socio-economic challenges.

But this very society that produced cricketers who were able to combine physical skills with nationalist consciousness has for the last two decades failed to reproduce that brilliance. Our team has fallen from grace so badly, that we now languish at the bottom of the heap in the longer formats of the game and “blow hot and cold” in the shortest version. Tomorrow’s final against Afghanistan who defeated us in the Super Six fixtures, though largely insignificant to West Indies’ progress to World Cup 2019, is an important first step in this team’s mental preparation to take on the bigger teams at next year’s event.