Hoping for the best but fearing the worst

Only the never-see-come-see variety of West Indian fans would be depressed this morning.

The rest, who have seen enough to operate on the principle of hoping for the best but fearing the worst, will just be disappointed that the considerable high of whipping South Africa in the semi-finals last Thursday could be followed so soon by such an anti-climactic performance against the revenge-minded Australians.

To indulge in all sorts of long-winded analysis of the eight-wicket defeat in the Champions Trophy final is really futile. What is there to analyse?

Some will lament that the Caribbean side performed below par when it really mattered, as against the same opponents in the DLF Cup final six weeks earlier in Kuala Lumpur.

If so, then what is par for this team? The evidence of the tournament in India suggests that it is somewhere between 80 (vs Sri Lanka) and 272 (vs England). So being bundled out for 138, even after racing to 49 without loss off five overs, doesn't qualify as a major shock. Remember the nine for 29 capitulation against Ricky Ponting's side in the Malaysian capital, or the scramble to defeat India in the final over of this tournament, or even the little stumble at the end of the rousing triumph over the South Africans?

Consistency, people, consistency. This is the elusive quality that the West Indies under Brian Lara are still struggling to achieve, and, as the upcoming three-Test series in Pakistan will confirm, the inability, as yet, to put together a succession of good performances or sustain pressure and maintain concentration for a protracted period means the team will remain potentially dangerous but practically so up-and-down that a grand resurgence is still some way off.

Lamenting over the decision to exclude Dwayne Smith in preference for Corey Collymore or Lara's decision to bat first are mere diversions from the fundamental challenge: getting players who are ever-so-slowly showing signs of improvement in their overall attitude to the game to accelerate that rate of progress so that, more often than not, they will have the character and discipline to battle tougher foes, testing pitches and pressure-cooker situations.

Let us not, in the rush to find reasons why things went so very wrong yesterday, ignore the blinding reality that Australia are, and have been the best team in the world for the better part of a decade. In the last two World Cup finals against Pakistan and India, they obliterated the opposition with clinically efficient cricket.

Having finally made it into the Champions Trophy final at the fifth attempt, they were never going to just cave in, never mind how deceptively ominous the early assault from Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul was.

It takes more than a couple expensive overs to throw Glenn McGrath off his stride, and when emerging players like Nathan Bracken and Shane Watson are already so well equipped to fill the occasional breach, Australians can be reasonably secure that, even if they are not always at the top of the tree, they won't endure a decline as swift or as disheartening as the recent West Indian experience anytime in the forseeable future.

Whether or not the regional side has made any meaningful progress along the way to upsetting the odds by reaching the Champions Trophy final will only be known in the coming days, weeks and months.

After nine weeks of focusing entirely on the shorter form of the game, they now must change tact and tactics with remarkable speed going into the first Test against the Pakistanis at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore from November 11. With only a two-day match in that northern city on November 8 and 9 to prepare for the more attritional duel, the danger is that they will be under-prepared, mentally more than technically, and find themselves up against it shortly after ball one.

But adversity has been a common denominator for the West Indies in Test cricket for they have not won a series anywhere in the world for two and a half years. In fact, their last Test match win away from home against a team ranked above them was, incredibly, more than six years ago against England in Birmingham.

For the third time, however, a strong showing in the Champions Trophy lures fans into believing that better days are coming. On the first two occasions, the West Indies destabilised their own encouraging foundation to leave the team in even greater despair.

Beaten by South Africa in the final of the inaugural tournament in Bangladesh in 1998, a subsequent standoff led by Lara and then vice-captain Carl Hooper prior to the historic first full tour of South Africa proved so destructive that the visitors were an embarrassment to their fans back home and the millions of non-white South Africans who had taken heart through the dark era of apartheid in the glorious deeds of the men from the Caribbean.

Two years ago, the dramatic two-wicket victory over England in the final at The Oval offered another springboard to redemption. But the West Indies players and administrators responded with a belly-flop into an empty pool as the protracted dispute over team sponsorship proved both debilitating and distressing for the next 18 months.

In that context, should the squad touch down in Lahore today with everyone ready and willing to play, that in itself will be a step forward.

Even after reaching the final in Mumbai, we must still be grateful for small mercies.