No sympathy but strong talk

There were any number of suggestions of how the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) should have handled the players just back from their thrashing in New Zealand.

They varied from an instant bush bath for all, to a year-long, allexpenses-paid holiday to Chechnya, to three months locked in a room listening to The Economist, The Cement Man and Mr. Submissions on the call-in programmes.

Ever a conservative organisation, the WICB is not inclined to such extreme measures, even after the continuing humiliation of West Indies cricket, and the executive committee that met the team last Friday would have treated them with as much compassion and understanding as possible.

Dr. Rudi Webster was called in to minister to the broken players and, we were made to understand, Clarvis Joseph and his committee told them they simply wanted to know what went wrong.

If that was the case, the day-long session was redundant. Everyone knew what went wrong. It was spelled out often enough by captain, coach and manager and, even on the other side of the globe, the live TV coverage meant we could see for ourselves as he suffered through it, night after night.

Lara acknowledged complacency after the great start in the first Test. He said that not everyone was giving 100 per cent. The commitment wasn't there. In his most factual assessment, he admitted the West Indies were outplayed which, after losses by nine wickets and an innings and 105 runs in the Tests and straightforward defeats in the One-Day Internationals, was self-evident.

These themes have now become monotonous. They have been trotted out following the similar debacles in Pakistan in 1997 and in South Africa a year ago.

What was needed on Friday was not so much sympathy as strong talk, similar to that which followed the South African experience.

Lara, manager Clive Lloyd and then coach, the late Malcolm Marshall, were called to a meeting with a committee chaired by WICB president Pat Rousseau and publicly admonished for weaknesses in leadership. Lara was placed on probation for two Tests and told to make significant improvement in his leadership skills.

What followed indicated that the message got through. Lara led from the front with his brilliant batting and the series against the powerful Australians was shared.

A culture of failure has become so entrenched that it will be hell to shake it off. New players of the past few years have joined a team that too rarely experiences the confident thrill of victory.

Lara, Lloyd and both recent coaches have repeatedly complained about the standard of domestic cricket and the lack of quality players coming through. These are undoubtedly pressing concerns but they are largely unrelated to what now happens once the West Indies venture outside the Caribbean.

Stacked up man-for-man prior to the series, the West Indies were certainly not inferior to New Zealand.

The difference was that our men performed well short of their potential, while theirs played above themselves.

Nor can the blame be shifted onto the loss of county cricket experience, as valuable as that admittedly was. How many New Zealanders, Australians or South Africans have developed through seasons in England

The questions that have to be asked are more straightforward.

Why have our main middle-order batsmen - Lara, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Jimmy Adams - fallen away as drastically on overseas tours as the accompanying statistics indicate It is not the newer players who let the side down in Pakistan, South Africa and New Zealand but those on whom the West Indies should be depending.

Why have fast bowlers of such potential like Franklyn Rose, who made such an impression in his debut series, and Merv Dillon gone backwards Why has Ricardo Powell not yet been able to remotely harness his obvious and natural talent.

Zimbabwe are here in less than a month. The least experienced of the Test countries, they have to play above themselves to compete - and they will. Unless, and until, the West Indies can follow suit, we will continue to be embarrassed.