As the West In­dies team heads in­to 2026 fo­cus­ing on their next ma­jor as­sign­ment - the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil's show­piece T20 World Cup in In­dia and Sri Lan­ka - the team is again at a cross­roads. This time, how­ev­er, and not for the first time in its his­to­ry, re­gion­al crick­et may need an over­haul with Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) fac­ing key de­ci­sions both on and off the field. 

Off the field, CWI pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low's de­ci­sion to stay in of­fice, even while serv­ing as St Vin­cent and the Grenadines’ Min­is­ter of Tourism and Mar­itime Af­fairs and an MP in its gov­ern­ment, re­mains a per­plex­ing sce­nario, if on­ly for the con­flict of in­ter­est is­sues that will sure­ly arise when it comes to that coun­try's deal­ings with the CWI it­self.

For all his claims of prece­dent be­ing set by for­mer CWI ex­ec­u­tives, of hav­ing the bless­ings of cur­rent board mem­bers to con­tin­ue in his role, and his per­son­al ex­pres­sions of con­fi­dence that he can man­age both port­fo­lios, Shal­low's de­fence for stay­ing on as CWI head rings hol­low. One on­ly needs to con­sid­er that tourism is one of his coun­try's ma­jor eco­nom­ic pil­lars and in­ter­sects with sport tourism to re­alise he is in a com­pro­mised po­si­tion as both a min­is­ter and CWI pres­i­dent. More­over, re­gion­al crick­et is in too much of a sham­bol­ic state now for him to be serv­ing two mas­ters, both of whom will re­quire sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of his time. Shal­low, there­fore, has a cru­cial de­ci­sion to make - ei­ther he fo­cus­es ful­ly on re­vi­tal­is­ing the re­gion­al game or on man­age­ment and de­vel­op­ment of his coun­try's equal­ly im­por­tant tourism sec­tor.

On the field of play, there are two is­sues at hand - whether cur­rent coach Dar­ren Sam­my has the abil­i­ty to lead the team out of its cur­rent rut and if the cap­tains of the var­i­ous team for­mats and the play­er re­source pool will be able to take the re­gion for­ward.

For all his suc­cess as a play­er, Sam­my seem­ing­ly lacks the coach­ing know-how need­ed to im­pact the cur­rent in­ex­pe­ri­enced Windies squad, in­clud­ing young play­ers with tech­ni­cal flaws that re­quire sig­nif­i­cant work. We on­ly have to look at the re­cent 2-0 Test se­ries loss to New Zealand, and to con­sid­er cap­tain Ros­ton Chase's com­plaint that the team was tac­ti­cal­ly mas­tered in the se­ries, to re­alise the huge gap the team faces when com­bat­ing world-class op­po­nents.

Need­less to say, the suit­abil­i­ty of Sam­my, who has been the coach of all for­mats of the game since April, must be as­sessed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. He has won just two se­ries - an ODI set over Pak­istan and a T20I against Bangladesh since as­sum­ing the job. But it is the loss­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the tests, where the team has been hu­mil­i­at­ed, most re­cent­ly by In­dia and New Zealand, that must re­al­ly con­cern fans.

In this re­gard, test cap­tain Chase's abil­i­ty to lead the team for­ward in 2026 must al­so come up for im­me­di­ate as­sess­ment. This will be need­ed to en­sure that the CWI does not face an­oth­er hur­dle in which it will have to change out cap­tains at some stage in 2026.

So even as the re­gion pre­pares for the mer­ri­ment of ush­er­ing in a new year, the next few weeks ahead of the T20 World Cup will need some soul-search­ing with­in the CWI and team man­age­ment if the Windies is to achieve the turn­around it has been seek­ing for decades now.