In the same man­ner that con­dem­na­tion of the West In­dies crick­et team, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI), the coach­es and sup­port staff flows freely and just­ly when the team is dec­i­mat­ed to the dis­grace of our crick­et, so too must praise be raised when the team suc­ceeds.

Un­der­stand­ably, the feel­ing of a break­through per­for­mance must be of a cau­tious na­ture, giv­en the decades of dis­ap­point­ment af­ter a qual­i­ty per­for­mance in a game or se­ries is fol­lowed by what has be­come ha­bit­u­al gut­less sur­ren­ders. No bet­ter ex­am­ple of that phe­nom­e­non than the ster­ling per­for­mance of the West In­dies in Aus­tralia, com­ing back in the last Test to reg­is­ter a re­sound­ing win over the Aussies on their home ground, on­ly to be fol­lowed by the ab­ject de­feats in the T20 and Test se­ries in the Caribbean, which cul­mi­nat­ed in the 27 all out dis­grace against a bel­liger­ent Aus­tralia.

Fol­low­ing Pak­istan’s mas­tery of our team in the T20 se­ries and scor­ing an em­phat­ic vic­to­ry in the first of the ODIs, the fate of skip­per Shai Hope's team seemed pre­dictable: an­oth­er spank­ing with­out re­lent in the last two match­es.

With re­newed pas­sion, how­ev­er, the team dis­card­ed their at­ti­tude of sub­mis­sion in the last two games, win­ning the last with the panache, un­re­lent­ing fast bowl­ing and dom­i­nant bat­ting which were qual­i­ties that were in­trin­sic to the great West In­di­an teams of the past.

The un­der­stand­ably small num­bers of fans at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my (BLCA) notwith­stand­ing, hard­core West In­di­an sup­port­ers all gath­ered a sec­ond breath and re­newed pride in the West In­di­an crick­et-play­ing na­tion af­ter vic­to­ry in the ODI se­ries.

Iron­i­cal­ly per­haps, or de­signed for the pur­pose, the ster­ling per­for­mances oc­curred si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the navel-string dis­cus­sions at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain in­volv­ing a few of the great gen­er­als of our crick­et­ing his­to­ry.

Mankind, in his day-to-day ex­is­tence, is not good at un­der­stand­ing and de­scrib­ing such oc­cur­rences in a clear and log­i­cal man­ner; but there must have been some in­ex­plic­a­ble con­nec­tion be­tween the greats gath­ered at the con­fer­ence in the cap­i­tal linked to the play­ers at Tarou­ba, 40 min­utes’ dri­ve to the south of Trinidad.

In what­ev­er man­ner the link­ages were struck, there must be a good omen aris­ing out of the shared cir­cum­stances. One CWI of­fi­cial said no few­er than 100 sug­ges­tions came out of the dis­cus­sions at the Hy­att.

That’s an as­sured ex­pec­ta­tion when the likes of Sir Clive Lloyd and Bri­an Lara-plus get to­geth­er to dis­cuss how to go for­ward.

West In­di­ans will, how­ev­er, know that it’s not the first oc­ca­sion when the great West In­di­an minds have pro­posed ways and means to trans­form the present and re­turn our crick­et to the hal­cy­on days of tri­umph over the crick­et­ing world.

On this oc­ca­sion, the “taste of the pud­ding will come in the eat­ing,” to ad­just a known West In­di­an tru­ism. Pos­i­tive re­sults can on­ly be mean­ing­ful when turned in­to plans and pro­grammes. The team, through in­spi­ra­tion, did their thing at the BLCA. Now is the time for the CWC to show its mo­tion.