Some silver linings in the eye of the storm

There is only so much the mind and the body can take. From a West Indian perspective, the Fourth Test has been a numbing experience.

After the second day, even die-hard West Indian supporters must have wondered how much more they could take this Australian summer. Depending on your perspective, the new Millennium started on January 1st 2000, or it will begin in a few days' time. If it started last January, then the new Millennium year has been one of the worst ever experienced by the West Indies, losing to New Zealand, England and now Australia, with just one victory.

This Fourth Test is the 20th played by the West Indies in the last three years. They've lost 17 of them so far overseas, winning one and drawing one since the closing months of 1997. If the new Millennium starts for the West Indies next week, it should be the appropriate time to make the necessary changes.

There is indeed a lot to be changed. The appropriate personnel should be strong enough, honest enough and sufficiently dedicated to make the necessary changes.

Let us begin with the team's supposed fitness. We are told that all the players went through rigorous fitness and medical tests even before they were selected for the tour. If that is true, then perhaps someone could explain why the West Indies were robbed of one of their better batsmen, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, during this tour. The medical people in Melbourne who perfomed the eventual operation on his heel said it was "the result of an injury that was sustained in the past, long before this tour started."

How is it that the foot injury was only diagnosed here in Australia? Who did the medical tests? Was he undermined in his diagnosis by the understanding that players like Chanderpaul and others must tour, whatever the cost? Is there one type of fitness test for the little left-hander, and the other senior players, and another for the younger, less experienced and perhaps less important ones?

I also want to ask, from the perspective of a Caribbean inhabitant, if the current West Indies players understand the meaning of the word "representation?"

I would say this. If a political ambassador was representing any Caribbean nation as badly as this cricket team, with some notable exceptions, that ambassador would not only have been recalled, but fired en route.

Similarly, I believe that some of these players should be fired. No-one is guaranteed a job, especially in Test cricket. Playing for the West Indies is a special achievement and has great responsibilities attached. That is why, to date, only 238 people have played Test cricket from nearly 11 million folks in the Caribbean.

Not only are the Test players special, but special efforts are expected of them by those they represent. With a few exceptions, those special efforts were not forthcoming. Somehow, it must be drummed into the heads of those who play for the West Indies that they are probably more important ambassadors than any political ambassador can be, since they are representing the entire Caribbean, not just their own interests.

Anyone who supports West Indian cricket, even those who want Australia to win, deserves better than this Australian summer.

Ridley Jacobs and Marlon Samuels, more with guts than natural ability, have toughed it out. Merve Dillon and Courtney Walsh, with injuries or just long-term tiredness, have done so too. Brian Lara has much on his plate, being the only real batting hope, but he too has done well.

Jacobs should be proud of his new West Indian record, taking seven catches. In all, he had nine dismissals in the game. This, mind you, from someone who is already 33, but who wants to play and shows it.

I am disappointed, though, that Jacobs was not pushed into meeting the public on achieving that record. In cricket that is the norm. Steve Waugh, on 98 not out and suffering from toothache, still managed to speak afterwards.

Now, needing 462 to win this game, the West Indies are again like the condemned, waiting to find out where or when the guillotine would fall. It is very tiring stuff, embarrassing too, even to Australian supporters, and cannot be allowed to go on.

Marlon Samuels had already shown that he is capable at Test level. So has Ramnaresh Sarwan, the recently re-selected Darren Ganga and maybe Merve Dillon, Marlon Black and even Colin Stuart.

These young men must be encouraged, with a few others, to be more positive, and removed from the negativity and moroseness of the present Test team. Something must be done, very soon.