The ma­jor teams of world crick­et, which the West In­dies plun­dered dur­ing the 15-year pe­ri­od of un­prece­dent­ed and un­sur­passed dom­i­nance from the late 1970s, did their re-think­ing and re­or­gan­i­sa­tion and are now light years ahead.

To­day, the so-called “Min­nows”, the likes of Scot­land, Zim­bab­we, even Nether­lands, have mea­sured the West In­dies, as do the great pythons of the Flori­da Ever­glades, and are swal­low­ing us whole.

No bet­ter ex­am­ple of the in­ca­pac­i­ty of the present team and its han­dlers to be­ing eat­en alive by the Nether­lands bats­men as they plun­dered Ja­son Hold­er for 31 runs in the play-off over, they hav­ing equalled the 374 runs that the WI bats­men had set for them.

Not one of the West In­di­ans on the field and or some­one from the dress­ing room could have found a way to counter the at­tack.

West In­dies crick­et com­men­ta­tors, play­ers and the West In­di­an crick­et­ing na­tion have be­come the laugh­ing stock of world crick­et. “It’s un­be­liev­able that this is the once Mighty West In­dies,” some­one will jeer­ing­ly say. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, a com­men­ta­tor or two, in­clud­ing for­mer play­ers who have still not yet men­tal­ly re­cov­ered from the wrath of our ma­raud­ing bats­men and ir­re­sistible four Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse, (bowlers) would ex­claim in tri­umph as the pain they once re­ceived from a West In­di­an team is now some­what as­suaged by a vic­to­ry over the present West In­di­ans.

Half mea­sures such as chang­ing a cap­tain, re­plac­ing a few bat­ters and bowlers, ex­press­ing faith in a new coach, lo­cal and for­eign ad­min­is­tra­tors, new boards and mem­bers, pre-se­ries coach­ing pro­grammes have not and will not get us out of this bind.

The pile of re­ports and rec­om­men­da­tions com­mis­sioned by the board/s have ei­ther not been ex­am­ined and or have been in­suf­fi­cient­ly at­tempt­ed. The fact is that WI crick­et has not ben­e­fit­ed from the analy­ses and ideas of our best and most con­cerned thinkers.

The lift-off for dra­mat­ic and po­ten­tial­ly dy­nam­ic change was re­cent­ly missed when the same board of di­rec­tors in the same cir­cum­stances and ra­tio­nale of pre­vi­ous boards.

What is need­ed are per­sons with new and rev­o­lu­tion­ary ideas to re­sus­ci­tate re­gion­al crick­et. Those of­fer­ing new pro­pos­als must present such ideas in pub­lic to a pan­el of West In­di­ans, in­clu­sive of for­mer crick­eters and fans based on the cur­rent fail­ings and needs.

For the im­me­di­ate fu­ture, the coach­es, the sup­port staff, a new board with cre­ative think­ing mem­bers with plans which are dif­fer­ent from what ex­ist to­day and a com­plete­ly new and al­ter­na­tive ap­proach to the game are need­ed. None of the ex­ist­ing mem­bers of na­tion­al boards will do, they have made no dif­fer­ence to their na­tion­al teams from which all of the West In­di­an play­ers of the present come.

So too, a group of new play­ers must re­place three-quar­ters of the cur­rent group. The first class com­pe­ti­tions around the re­gion, the ma­jor schools in each ter­ri­to­ry must come un­der scruti­ny and be re­vamped to al­low the young tal­ent to come through.

Cari­com gov­ern­ments must in­vest re­sources, hu­man and phys­i­cal, and with cre­ative think­ing; leave be­hind though, pack­aged in­su­lar­i­ty of West In­di­an po­lit­i­cal life.