Al­though sport­ing fans may be dis­tract­ed by the cur­rent 2022 Fi­fa World Cup in Qatar, Trinida­di­ans in par­tic­u­lar would not have over­looked Nicholas Pooran's res­ig­na­tion as West In­dies white ball cap­tain ear­li­er this week.

While many will ar­gue the de­ci­sion was late in com­ing fol­low­ing the Windies’ em­bar­rass­ing ICC T20 World Cup ex­it in Aus­tralia, where Eng­land copped the ti­tle, there will be mixed re­ac­tions to whether it was the best call.

This news­pa­per, how­ev­er, lauds Mr Pooran for do­ing what we be­lieve was the right thing.

In­deed, com­ing from a rich back­ground of suc­cess in the tour­na­ment, where the team se­cured two ti­tles, the team’s re­cent fail­ure to ad­vance out of even the play­off phase wound­ed West In­di­an pride even fur­ther.

How­ev­er, facts are un­com­pro­mis­ing and tell their own tales. Af­ter be­ing named full-time skip­per fol­low­ing the stun­ning res­ig­na­tion of com­pa­tri­ot Kieron Pol­lard in May, then-skip­per Pooran won just four of 15 ODIs and four of 15 T20Is be­fore their T20 World Cup hu­mil­i­a­tion. More­over, Pooran’s bat­ting suf­fered dur­ing his tenure as skip­per and he al­so failed to show he was ei­ther a good leader of men or a bril­liant tac­ti­cian on the field of play.

Suf­fice it to say, Crick­et West In­dies may not have giv­en Pooran enough time to do on-the-job train­ing un­der for­mer skip­per Pol­lard to have a chance at suc­cess in the first in­stance.

In of­fer­ing his res­ig­na­tion, Pooran said, "By step­ping down now as the West In­dies white-ball cap­tain, I be­lieve it is in the best in­ter­ests of the team and for me per­son­al­ly, as I need to con­cen­trate on what I can de­liv­er to the side as a play­er. I des­per­ate­ly want us to be suc­cess­ful and the most val­ue I can give to the team is through ful­ly fo­cus­ing on the role of con­sis­tent­ly scor­ing runs at cru­cial times."

We sin­cere­ly hope Mr Pooran re­bounds, since his bat­ting and wick­et­keep­ing skills are valu­able as­sets to a team which will be feel­ing its way while search­ing for a re­turn to the T20 pin­na­cle.

Now that Pooran has done the ho­n­ourable thing, fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar de­ci­sion from coach Phil Sim­mons, it is time for CWI to put its house in or­der. This is not the first time this news­pa­per has used this space to make this call.

For far too long, WI coach­es and skip­pers have been de­nied the best crick­et­ing tal­ent avail­able due to poor board man­age­ment and mis­han­dling of play­ers, in­clud­ing the di­vi­sive is­sue of in­su­lar­i­ty caus­ing fric­tion with­in team struc­tures.

CWI boss Rick­ey Sker­ritt was one of the first per­sons to pub­licly ex­press his dis­ap­point­ment at the team’s ear­ly T20 World Cup ex­it and has since set up an in­de­pen­dent three-mem­ber team, among them West In­dies world record hold­er Bri­an Lara, to do a post-mortem of what hap­pened.

We hope, how­ev­er, that this is not mere win­dow dress­ing and that the CWI ful­ly ac­cepts that pan­el’s fi­nal rec­om­men­da­tions for the re­ju­ve­na­tion of Windies crick­et, in­clud­ing man­age­r­i­al shake-ups, if that is what it takes to re­turn re­gion­al crick­et to its place atop the world.

For now, Mr Pooran's act gives the CWI a chance to start with a clean slate.