The Surfer

The rest are obviously still at the first-class level or unable to make the shift from limited-overs play and, worst of all, continue to make the same technical and mental mistakes over and over again. Tim MacIntosh, Martin Guptill, Daniel Flynn and Peter Fulton all have massive issues with their footwork - issues so large that if they aren't ironed out they will never make the grade.

So what is wrong with our batting? Why do we find test cricket so hard? In 10 completed innings this year, prior to the second test, New Zealand were dismissed for less than 300 in seven of them. Last week's second innings was the worst collapse of the lot - before the Wellington innings took the title.

Admittedly the West Indies tail wagged, a custom lost in the headstrong years. Nothing expresses a team's state of mind better than the approach taken by the lower order. For 15 years the tailenders have thrown their wickets away. Six out was all out, a luxury even the strongest team can ill afford. Now Ravi Rampaul and Sulieman Benn put a price on their wickets. Still, the lack of firepower seen from the Australians was unsettling.

The journey started with a scholarship to the all-white enclave of Dale College, a sporting mecca in an exclusive part of the Eastern Cape, when Ntini was 14. By the time he left, he spoke serviceable English, and his frenzied, Malcolm Marshall-esque action had been honed into something repeatable by the school's coaching team ... Even now, you can still see traces of his home-grown method in the way he jumps out wide of the crease – a legacy of the spiked boots that used to disagree with King William's Town's concrete pitches. Yet this quirk has worked to his advantage, setting batsmen a different geometrical conundrum to the one they face every day.

Flynn has gone backwards over the last year and whoever is responsible for that should be ashamed of themselves. Here is a young man with a great attitude and a ton of determination but a technique that is doomed to failure. It's beyond me how he has been allowed to develop this over complicated method that results in no forward movement and lbw after lbw. Fulton looks like a dead man walking at the crease right now and epitomises our woes. Here's a player brought back into the test arena on the back of great first-class form - and does not look any better than last time he was there. There's a swag of these players littering our game right now. I'd suggest these players actually analyse how they are scoring their first-class runs; not how many they are scoring.

The West Indies cricket team, like the Beatles or the United Nations, represent a far greater whole than the sum of its parts. The acid test is made in our hearts repeatedly and that will not change. Ask any West Indian: for all his success, would Darren Ganga prefer to play for Trinidad & Tobago or the West Indies? We all know the answer.