Blind to reality

We must be the stupidest people to ever walk the face of the earth. Excuse the poor grammar, but "most stupid" doesn't seem to carry the same degree of forcefulness necessary to properly reflect the ignorance, deliberate or otherwise, that blights this chain of territories from Negril at the westernmost tip of Jamaica to Guyana's Amazonian border with Brazil.

Yesterday, I had the distinctly uncomfortable experience of listening to two participants at a two-day conference at the Crowne Plaza give their views on some of the reasons why the abuse of guns has resulted in such chaos, tragedies and near anarchy in so many societies. The two gentlemen, one from Jamaica and the other from Brazil, without any prompting, identified exactly the same issues that are relevant right here, from glorifying violence through music to politicians legitimising gang leaders, to corrupt police.

Most of us with any sense of what is going on in the world would be aware of this anyway, but it reinforced the frightening reality that none of the social challenges confronting us now are new, and that we are blindly repeating the same mistakes of other nations in our region, yet seem to be making no meaningful effort to change course as if we are somehow so special and so blessed that we will escape the consequences.

This sort of head-in-the-sand mentality appears to be the same at the critical, decision-making levels of West Indies cricket, although the challenges there, in the context of the bigger picture, are almost irrelevant. In fact, if it could be proven that by the regional game plummeting further to the bottom our societies would be saved from imploding, then the theme song for the 2008 Digicel Series should definitely be: "Down with the Windies!"

Yet the reality is that, despite all of the ego massaging and bigging up marketing campaigns ahead of the series, West Indies are expected to struggle anyway against Sri Lanka from Easter weekend and then against Australia from mid-May. You wouldn't think that, though, in the wake of Tuesday night's launch of the international season in Kingston.

Here's what Tony Deyal, the West Indies Cricket Board's corporate secretary, had to say about the organisation's vision:

"Our goal is to regain the pinnacle of world cricket by 2012 and to do that we need all the help and support we can get and all the sponsors. Also we have a new team management and we have a new approach, the purpose of all this is to develop a positive culture within the team as well as the bench strength in order to achieve our goal."

Now Tony is a real cricket pyong, so there's no questioning his passion for the game. But you really have to wonder if pragmatism was flung out the window before the officials sequestered themselves to come up with the strategic plan that identifies the primary goal as if it was actually achievable.

Like the entertainers who give thanks and praises to the Creator before launching into their vulgar or anger-laden inflammatory lyrics, there is a worrying degree of disconnection from reality here. Like the mistakes that continue to be repeated, we have heard of all these lofty ambitions before.

Every WICB president of this decade has dangled the carrot, in different ways it has to be said, of the return to the glory days being just around in the corner. Wes Hall said, among many other things, that we just needed to get two genuinely fast bowlers. Teddy Griffith targeted a top-three ranking before the end of his term. Ken Gordon established a "Win World Cup Committee" in the countdown to the 2007 Caribbean event. And now we have Julian Hunte's administration offering its vision of a promised land that isn't all that far away.

Oh, and how could I forget that the man whom many now see as the real saviour of West Indies cricket, Sir Allen Stanford, has set a deadline of 3-5 years to make it back to the summit, although that represents a hedging of his bets from five months ago when he stated, definitively, that it would happen in three years' time?

However no-one holds them, or the captains, managers and other officials who make similar unsubstantiated claims to proper account when the objective and reality remain miles apart, just as this shot into the optimistic air surely will be. So you really can't blame them for persevering with a modus operandi that keeps a gullible populace perpetually expectant of the miracle just beyond the horizon.

But for injuries to Chris Gayle and Fidel Edwards at critical stages of the second Test in Cape Town at the start of the year, West Indies could very well have pulled off victory and a Test series triumph in South Africa that would certainly have been one of the greatest upsets in the contemporary game. Is that enough evidence, though, to expect so much improvement so quickly, especially in the context of the rapid, injury-blighted decline that followed?

When you look at the standard of regional cricket and the fact that we have languished near the foot of the international rankings for so long, it is bewildering as to how such a goal was not only identified, but stated publicly as a realistic target.

Maybe, deep down inside, we all want to be hypocritical entertainers, power-hungry politicians or corrupt police and therefore choose to remain blind to reality. Or maybe we're just really, really stupid.