The pain I've endured watching West Indies cricket

With only the new captain, Carl Hooper, the enduring "500 wicket-man", Courtney Walsh, Ridley Jacobs, Brian Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul as veterans, our hope is that the pain will somehow ease, the smiles return and the way forward become accessible for West Indies cricket.

Even after losing the Second Test match in Trinidad & Tobago, the signs are so positive that I am trying hard to forget some of the team's recent past performances, especially while on tour. For everyone's sake, I hope that there is only a straight, level road ahead, even if there are occasionally detours and the odd bump.

I am not a masochist but since becoming a sports journalist in 1993/4, I have suffered a great deal of pain at the hands of the West Indies cricket team.

I worry about my sanity, wondering why I continue to endure such brutal beatings. I even get pain inflicted on me by so-called West Indies supporters who seem to think that being dishonest in reporting the team's tortuous efforts of the recent past will somehow improve West Indies' fortunes. The abuse one endures for being honest is truly amazing. Unless one is on the spot, one cannot imagine the scenario, however much television and radio commentary try to enhance and inform.

I felt every blow that the West Indies suffered in Pakistan in 1997 when they were so badly beaten by the hosts by an innings in the first two Tests, then by ten wickets in the Third Test. Take it from me, the results were not even that close. One got the distinct impression that Pakistan were playing against themselves since the West Indies never really arrived.

I again experienced every deadly thrust of the Springbok spear - two and a half months of it - in 1998/99. One placard of that tour, in Durban, Put it in a nut-shell: "Will the real West Indies cricket team please turn up, and please, oh please, send these damn cricketing impostors home!"

The players' queries about fees were so ill-advised and ill-timed, and they were so vastly under-prepared psychologically, that the West Indies started the tour of that beautiful country already losing -friends, that is. It was not long afterwards that they were badly blown away, 5-0, by a cricket team that was ready for the fray.

The way it looked, South Africa could have been preparing for all of the 22 years that they had been in the cricketing wilderness for the series against the West Indies in 1998/9, not to mention that they wanted to exact some revenge for the loss in Barbados in 1992, when they expected to win. To be honest, South Africa were so prepared for that Test series that if the cricketing world had been united against them, and not just the rabble that was then the West Indies cricket team, South Africa would have beaten them hands down.

It was painful to watch. Try as they might, the stalwart fast bowlers Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose could not redress the inefficiencies and imbalances of the batsmen on that tour.

Fast-forward to the almost heart-stopping debacle at Lord's last year in another Second Test, this time after beating England so decisively in the First. How I survived that game, I will never know! Those with a Caribbean heritage in England were ill en-masse as the West Indies crumbled to 54 all out in the second innings, again to lose on the third day. To my mind, this game was nearly as bad as the showing at Port Elizabeth, in terms of performance.

Yet nothing could have been as poor, in appearance at least, as what I saw at the Wooloongabba, in Brisbane, during the First Test of the last West Indies tour. In all of my years of watching, playing and covering international cricket, I have never seen a team look as bedraggled as the West Indies when they took the field after making 82 all out in the first innings.

It was like looking at scenes from that 1960s horror classic "Night of the Living Dead" - zombies walking everywhere. The players looked like souls wandering in purgatory, somewhere between heaven and hell; listless, planless and directionless. That the West Indies lost that Test in three days too was no surprise to anyone at the ground.

When I suggested then that the West Indies team should be sent home immediately after that First Test if attitudes and performances did not pick up, it was one of those instances when television could not tell the entire story. One had to be there to experience the peripheral goings-on, to identify the wandering rabble for what it was - a team lacking in every facet needed to play international cricket.

Now with a new captain, the West Indies team appears to be actually learning about itself, while still trying to be competitive. Already, hopefully, they will have learned that ambition, potential and talent do not always outdo professionalism, tenacity and know-how. Converting potential energy to effective performances is the engineering of professional sport, the air running under the wings to lift the craft.

South Africa are a very good cricket team, with players complementing each other well. Carl Hooper must, though, try to emulate Australia's Steve Waugh, England's Nasser Hussein and South Africa's Shaun Pollock, perhaps taking a characteristic or two from each, to become the best captain he can be, and hopefully, have his team follow suit.

While the signs are excellent for the West Indies in the future, with the younger men being given the opportunities, everyone must, from veterans to rookies, pull their weight, contributing and complementing each other to be a substantial whole. Yes, hope springs eternal for all of us West Indian supporters, but efforts must continue and, hopefully, be doubled.