Ho hum, another tour

'...With a national football team counting down to an historic World Cup finals appearance, who around here really cares anyway?' © Getty Images

So, will Zimbabwe take the early lead in the upcoming series by winning the first two matches by default?

Unlikely, although it is a risky business to forecast anything resembling normalcy in contemporary West Indies cricket, except, of course, if normal programming involves frantic last-minute negotiations, claims and counter-claims by all the stakeholders in the game, and a general public increasingly fed-up with it all.

For all the significance attached to the meeting between Players' Association president Dinanath Ramnarine and West Indies Board Cricket Committee member Deryck Murray late yesterday, no ground-breaking resolution was expected from the exercise, seeing that the players and the administration remain poles apart on fundamental issues relating to the proposed retainer contracts.

But in light of the latest developments on the political front, and with a national football team counting down to an historic World Cup finals appearance, who around here really cares anyway?

Even with everything sorted out and with the best available team taking the field on Saturday morning at the Antigua Recreation Ground, the prospect of a limited-over series between the West Indies and Zimbabwe generates as much excitement as two CEPEP crews arguing over who swept the most leaves and pulled up the most blades of grass on any given morning. In the rush to capitalise on television revenues, series and tours are now packed so closely together that there is no longer the gradual building of anticipation at the arrival of a visiting team to take on the local heroes.

Maybe in this case, though, it is just as well that the seven one-dayers will be over before too many people realise that they were actually being played.

If this sounds ungrateful coming from someone who benefits directly from international cricket involving the West Indies, so be it. There comes a time when it all gets to be too much, where more matches are essentially meaningless, where the repeated descriptions of "great" innings and "memorable" performances begin to ring hollow, simply because we hear it every five minutes.

And when you have a team that is in the midst of its worst period ever in 78 years of international cricket, coupled with an endless series of damaging public disputes involving players and administrators, seething anger simmers into frustration, then indifference and then disinterest. As much as they love the game, many fans have just about had enough with all of this nonsense and will find other diversions to fill their spare time while they wait on West Indies cricket to sort itself out.

Yet the signs are not encouraging. Everyone is convinced of the correctness of his position. Everyone repeatedly claims to be seeking the very best interests of the game and, God forbid, will never ever do anything to tarnish a wonderful legacy that has been entrusted to them. Is so? Then how did it come to this?

We have grown accustomed, especially over the last 18 months (imagine that, a year-and-a-half of constant sniping) to the regular altercations, whether verbally or via press release, between the WICB and WIPA.

Digicel and Cable and Wireless, with visions of greater market share dancing in their bosses' heads, have been only too happy to lend a hand in pursuit of their own objectives with all manner of syrupy stupidness.

But now there is a new dimension to the banter. Former players, some of them members of the Board's new Cricket Committee, are bowling more bouncers or hitting over the top more often. A former World Series Cricket manager and recent West Indies performance enhancer was sharing licks left, right and centre last weekend, prompting the Australian head coach of the regional side to describe one of the accusations levelled at him as an outright lie.

If this is an orchestrated attempt to keep West Indies cricket and the upcoming series against a squad with more than its own share of challenges on the front burner, then it is a masterstroke. What better way to fuel interest in a glorified non-event than for the West Indies to have no captain, no team, no contracts and everybody quarrelling with everybody four days from the first ball in St John's?

As they say in the marketing business, bad publicity is better than no publicity at all. In that respect, the West Indies are the undisputed world leaders, and with the eyes of the global cricketing community focussed more and more on our tiny patches of earth and on whether or not we'll be ready for next year's hosting of the World Cup, everything around here these days is newsworthy.

All these conscientious, dedicated, selfless souls working for the betterment of West Indies cricket should step back and take a critical look at their handiwork. A team that ruled the world as none before or since resting comfortably near the bottom of the ladder. An administration so deep in debt that it is effectively on life-support, hanging on for the expected infusion of cash from the World Cup.

In response to these blinding realities, you might provoke a response that begins something like: "Yes, but ", as every conceivable explanation is offered as to why things are not as simple as that and how that is only one side of the story, and so on, and so on.

Before you have to endure any more excuses, just walk away and hope that one day, one day, it will all be over.