Cricinfo Select

Once rightly regarded as the West Indies' next run-scoring wicketkeeper, and even spoken of as a potential captain, Denesh Ramdin is fighting for form and his place in the team. Six weeks away from the first World Cup to be staged in the Caribbean, his struggles in both departments and the dearth of realistic alternatives are major causes for concern.

Three one-dayers, three openers, three half-centuries - a triumphant 98 for Sourav Ganguly, a confident 69 for Gautam Gambhir, and a ferocious 41-ball 70 for Robin Uthappa. All three, curiously, batting on the comeback trail. What it adds up to is problems for Virender Sehwag, who, having fallen from the heights of vice-captaincy to the depths of discard in the span of three months, finds himself in a world of quiet introspection.

It won't get many column inches in the mainstream cricket press, but the World Cricket League, which started in Nairobi yesterday and continues into next week, features the best of the rest, the six sides just under the ten Test-playing countries. For the two finalists, the rewards are bountiful - a place among the big boys in the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship in South Africa this September, along with $250,000. For countries used to surviving on annual handouts from the ICC of less than $200,000, that's big money.

With the exception of Bermuda, cricket is not a mainstream sport in any of the participants. And yet it survives, and in some instances thrives, despite the lack of attention and a relatively small number of enthusiasts.

There are times when the International Cricket Council deserves nothing so much as a smack around the head. The ICC's handling of the Gibbs saga was not one of those times.

A thesis I have been reading recently reveals a statistic that says Pakistan had a 5% chance of winning a Test match in South Africa, while South Africa has a 56% chance of winning a Test in Pakistan. Statistics do tell a story though they sometimes don't tell the whole story: as luck would have it, Pakistan has now increased the percentage of winning in South Africa.

When did the English fall out of love with one-day cricket? They did, after all, invent the game. It started with county cricket's Gillette Cup in 1963, it continued with the inaugural one-day international against Australia in January 1971, and then they hosted three consecutive World Cups from 1975 to 1983. In the last four years they've even pioneered the Twenty20 version of the game.

And yet, a Cricinfo poll at the end of 2006 showed that, among British fans, more than 90% rated England's defense of the Ashes more important than a successful World Cup, an imbalance that was borne out by those most visible and vocal of supporters, the Barmy Army. More than 1700 fans signed up for the Army's official Test tours. For the one-dayers, however, there were a mere seven.

As Bob Dylan observed in a song a few years ago, Things Have Changed. For the first time in perhaps 35 years, there is no outstanding attack in world cricket.

The Indian cricket fan's anxieties will have lessened following the compromise brokered by the Delhi High Court allowing Doordarshan, the state-owned free-to-air channel, to telecast - with a seven-minute delay - the second one-day international between India and West Indies on Wednesday. That is in addition to the telecast by Neo Sports, the pay channel promoted by Nimbus Communication, which owns the global television rights to Indian cricket.

It was inevitable - the stakes were just too high for it not to happen - but experience suggests that this is merely a temporary reprieve. The bigger question is how and why it was allowed to come to such a pass. The issue was hardly new, nor was this the first time that the courts had been called on to broker a solution. Yet, none of the stake-holders - Doordarshan (DD), Nimbus Communications, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) - chose to act in time. Perhaps each was waiting for the other party to blink.

Anyone who claims that cricket journalism is an easy lark has obviously never had to sit and watch England make perpetual fools of themselves in the one-day arena. It really is the most soul-destroying of occupations. Day after day after day, the same old rubbish is served up for our delectation, with lashings and lashings of the same old failings and a side-order of the same old excuses, and we poor mugs try to turn this into the purplest of prose, trying to kid ourselves that we, they, you ... anyone ... actually gives a stuff.

And another one bites the dust. Try telling Herschelle Gibbs that; "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me."