West Indies: Invest in more practice areas

Is anyone listening 'Does anyone really care'

Yet again, we have had the embarrassment of a visiting captain complaining about the lack of adequate practice facilities in the West Indies.

Moin Khan's comments prior to Wednesday's first One-Day International final simply echoed the public censure of Steve Waugh and Clive Lloyd last season and the concern that has existed for some time.

The problem is that some of the club grounds that are utilised to accommodate the visitors - and the locals too - do not have all the resources necessary for proper preparation.

Even if pitches are acceptable, the hard, dry surface at this time of year makes fielding hazardous.

The comparison with what is provided overseas is stark.

At almost every other major international ground I can think of, adequate nets and practice areas are part of the complex. It is merely a stroll away for a batsman needing a workout during the course of a match.

In the West Indies, the Queen's Park Oval, by some way the best equipped and best managed of all our venues, is the only one with such an en suite arrangement.

As of Thursday, it is also the only one with modern, fully-equipped indoor nets, an overdue addition rightly praised by Jimmy Adams and Roger Harper as a significant development.

The problem of practice is a recent phenomenon but no less troubling for that.

The long-established procedure was for pitches to be cut on the outfield of the Test grounds and for the teams to share them, one morning, one afternoon.

The Queen's Park Oval and the Antigua Recreation Ground were the only exceptions.

It was an arrangement that worked efficiently. Far from criticising, touring teams enjoyed the hard, true surfaces prepared on the boundary's edge at Kensington, Bourda and Sabina.

It was also a chance to get a feel of the environment in which they would play the Tests.

Then the International Cricket Council (ICC) declared the grounds no-practice zones prior to Test matches and alternatives had to be found.

So far, they haven't been satisfactory. Nor is there any ready answer short of spending the money necessary to improve the relevant club grounds.

Even that does not eliminate the absence of on-site practice areas.

There is simply no room for expansion at Kensington, Sabina and Bourda so they will have to continue to depend on the good graces of clubs - unless, of course, the cricket associations and the governments recognise that all the aforementioned venues are obsolete in the 21st Century.

But that is a horse this column has already flogged to death.

The plot thickens and yet the outcome remains as shadowy as it ever was.

Since Hansie Cronje's belated confession that he sold himself to an Indian bookmaker, more revelations of dirty dealings have come from every which way.

Ali Bacher claims he has been told by former cricketers whom he trusts - remember, he used to trust Cronje as well - that two matches and one umpire in last year's World Cup were fixed.

No doubt those sources had heard it from somebody who had heard it from somebody else.

Chris Lewis says he has heard from a named bookmaker that three unnamed England players were also on the take.

Cyril Mitchley and Rudi Koertzen, two South African umpires, have revealed how they were offered big bucks to influence the way things turned out.

Indra Singh Bindra, once president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) so a big man on the international scene, informs us that match-fixing has gone on for as long as he can recall.

And he charges that Jagmohan Dalmiya, ICC chairman, is in with 'sharks and the mafia', the same Dalmiya who will chair next week's meeting to discuss the issue.

There are a couple of common threads running through all of these revelations and accusations.

One is that none can be proved. The other is that several have come from administrators who have been in positions to do something about them.

Even now, there is a report lying on the desk of someone in authority in Pakistan that directly implicates four Pakistani cricketers - two of them currently in the West Indies - in match-fixing and recommends that they should be banned for life.

The Pakistanis are not the only ones guilty of covering up.

With the connivance of the ICC, the Australians kept the involvement of Shane Warne and Mark Waugh quiet for three years before the Press found out.

When Lewis made his charges last week, he was instantly cast in the role of villain. No one seemed to feel he was doing the game a favour by alerting the authorities to what he had heard.

The issue is surely serious enough for every report to be taken seriously and investigated.