For the better part of the last two decades, winning has been a very rare experience for West Indies cricket teams, making yesterday's back-to-back victories by the men's and women's teams in World Twenty20 semi-finals at Mumbai's Wankhede stadium that much sweeter.
Caribbean cricket fans, who have not been able to celebrate any international title being captured by a senior regional team since 2012, are now eagerly looking forward to the prospect of landing two in the finals to be played on Sunday at Eden Gardens, Kolkata.
In the men's game, spectators in India and across the Caribbean were on the edge of their seats as late replacement Lendl Simmons led the team to a nail-biting seven wicket win, with three close shaves adding to the suspense. Simmons, who joined the team to replace injured Grenadian batsman Andre Fletcher, made India pay dearly for their bowling mistakes, overhauling a seemingly insurmountable score of 192 to stun the packed Wankhede into silence.
It came on the heels of an earlier win by West Indies women, who reached their final when captain Stafanie Taylor scored 25 and took three wickets to defeat New Zealand by six runs. Until yesterday, that team had been the eternal bridesmaids at the Women's World T20, failing to get past the semi-final stage in three previous attempts.
Although regarded as one of the top women's cricket teams in the world, to date their main success has been second place in the International Women's Cricket Council Trophy, a competition for the second tier of women's national cricket teams, in 2003.
Their male counterparts entered this the tournament ranked #2 in the world in this shortest format of the game. In comparison, they are ranked eighth in Tests and ninth in ODIs–reflecting the general decline the sport has suffered in the Caribbean in the 1990s and 2000s. Since 1995, the team has lost 21 matches by an innings, although prior to that the West Indies never lost more than four matches by over an innings and had been one of the strongest teams in the world in both Test and ODI cricket.
The West Indies won the ICC Cricket World Cup in 1975 and 1979, the ICC World Twenty20 in 2012, the ICC Champions Trophy in 2004. They were the first to win the World Cup twice, although that record has since been surpassed by Australia's five World Cup wins.
The magnitude of yesterday's victory, played before a crowd of more than 70,000 passionate supporters of the Indian team, is made more astounding by the fact that the Caribbean had not played many international T20s in the preceding 23 months. In fact, they had played just eight in total since the last World Twenty20 in Bangladesh in 2014.
However, even as congratulations are in order for the two regional teams, concern must be expressed about the long standing stormy relationship between the players, represented by the West Indian Players Association (WIPA), and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).
Since 2005, when the first in a series of disputes erupted over sponsorship and other rights, problems have been constantly brewing between the two sides.
Hopefully, with double successes on Sunday, an opportunity will be created for resolving the many issues that keep cropping up between the WIPA and the WICB. This is essential if the teams are to move on to future successes in all formats of the game.