It is quite fit­ting that for act­ing "con­trary to the spir­it of the game," West In­dies wick­et­keep­er De­nesh Ramdin has been fined 20 per cent of his match fee by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil. His dis­grace­ful and dis­re­spect­ful dis­play on Sun­day de­served a se­vere pen-al­ty, as well as a strong rep­ri­mand. It was un­sports­man­like be­hav­iour which taint­ed a rare mo­ment of glo­ry for the team. Ramdin's 143-run part­ner­ship with record-break­ing num­ber 11 bats­man Tino Best should have been the main post-game talk­ing point. How­ev­er, he took things in an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion when, af­ter mak­ing on­ly his sec­ond Test 100, he pro­duced a piece of pa­per from his pock­et and dis­played a mes­sage that read: "Yeah Viv talk nah."

That was his churl­ish re­sponse to crit­i­cism from for­mer West In­dies leg­end Viv Richards about his re­cent dis­mal per­for­mances for the West In­dies.

Ramdin's ex­pla­na­tion that he "got a bit emo­tion­al and it came out the way it did" cer­tain­ly does not help. If he can­not ac­cept con­struc­tive crit­i­cism from one of the great­est crick­eters ever to come out of the West In­dies, how can he be ex­pect­ed to learn and de­vel­op as a sports­man? It is a fact that Ramdin has strug­gled with the bat for a long time and has not kept wick­et well dur­ing this se­ries, so he should have tak­en note of-not of­fence at-Sir Viv's com­ment. Worse yet, af­ter Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, Ramdin is the most se­nior play­er on the team at present, and should be set­ting the tone for the younger play­ers. Ramdin is, of course, al­so the cur­rent cap­tain of the Trinidad and To­ba­go team. Were it not for that at­ten­tion-get­ting in­ci­dent, we would have been cel­e­brat­ing the fact that he fi­nal­ly found form on Sun­day, con­vert­ing his overnight 60 in­to an un­beat­en 107 to help lift the Windies to 426 in their first in­nings.

Ramdin might be in need of a re­fresh­er course in good sports­man­ship which has as one of its most fun­da­men­tal char­ac­ter­is­tics, re­spect.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he isn't the on­ly re­gion­al play­er who has dis­played ar­ro­gant, child­ish be­hav­iour, both on and off the field, in re­cent times. Too of­ten, con­tro­ver­sies and per­son­al­i­ty clash­es have over­shad­owed and neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed the team's per­for­mances. Such a sit­u­a­tion left the team with­out se­nior all-rounder Chris Gayle for 14 months fol­low­ing his pub­lic spat with the WICB and head coach Ot­tis Gib­son. That mat­ter has on­ly just been re­solved af­ter long, dif­fi­cult me­di­at­ing ef­forts in­volv­ing Gayle's rep- re­sen­ta­tives, WICB of­fi­cials, Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent Ralph Gon­salves and Bald­win Spencer, Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua. Gayle will fi­nal­ly re­join the team for the up­com­ing ODI se­ries be­gin­ning on Sat­ur­day. While the West In­dies team has shown some flash­es of bril­liance in re­cent match­es, it is still very much a team try­ing to emerge from years of de­cline. To suc­ceed as a unit, play­ers need to de­vel­op the char­ac­ter­is­tics of true sports­men, in­clud­ing re­spect, ma­tu­ri­ty and ethics. Raw ath­let­ic tal­ent alone isn't enough for suc­cess in any sport­ing are­na.