A deafening silence

Perhaps the most damning indictment of the state of cricket in the Caribbean is that yesterday's defeat in the Trinidad Test has been treated by the region's press with a resigned acceptance. The chest-thumping editorials calling for resignations and recriminations are almost entirely absent. Another day, another defeat ... so what?

While Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh were still keeping the side afloat there was a false belief that things weren't that bad. There might not be the endless pool of fast bowlers to chose from, but the batting had depth, and there was always Brian Lara.

But the batting has failed when it matters - there are strokemakers, but the crash-bang-wallop approach of too many of them is exposed at the top level, and while their innings are spectacular, they are hardly designed to win Tests. Even Lara seems increasingly weighed down by the burden of leading the side and almost single-handedly holding the batting together.

The bowling remains a major problem. The injury to Fidel Edwards has not helped, but the rest - Tino Best excepted - are a pretty ramshackle bunch. Speaking on the BBC yesterday, Geoffrey Boycott, who has seen most series in the Caribbean as a commentator since the early 1990s, said that in general West Indies fielded "ordinary medium-pacers", adding his well-used phrase, "who couldn't bowl me mother out".

And there is no spinner of any note - Dave Mohammad, generally considered the best up-and-coming slow bowler - looked fairly ordinary when exposed on an admittedly docile pitch in South Africa, while Omari Banks, who impressed as an offspinning allrounder against Australia last year, has missed the entire series with injury.

There are suggestions that Lara should step down, but he has no obvious replacement. Shivnarine Chanderpaul doesn't appear to want the job, and Ramnaresh Sarwan, judging by his listless performance when Lara was off the field at Kingston, isn't ready for it. And aside from those two, there's nobody who stands out.

Lara will only step down when he decides that the responsibilities of the role have become too much and that his batting is suffering. His failures in the first two Tests are not too serious, but if his poor form continues then he might start thinking along those lines. He is the one world-class player in the side and probably the only one capable of uniting the side by the sheer force of his personality. Without him, the already creaking unit could come apart at the seams.

Yesterday's resignation of Ricky Skerritt highlighted an underlying malaise. Skerritt explained that he was standing down because he had been "unable to instill in the entire team the fullest understanding of their obligations on and off the field to the people of the West Indies". Clearly, in his opinion, too many of the side still regarding playing for West Indies as an opening to the good life rather than something that should lead to even harder work and dedication.

Only Bangladesh and Zimbabwe sit below West Indies in the ICC Test rankings, a situation which seemed inconceivable last time England visited the Caribbean. Sadly, it is now the right place for them. And what's more, the gulf between those three and the rest of the Test-playing world is growing wider by the series.