Time to move on. Time to be de­ci­sive! Time to act in the best in­ter­est of all!

And yes, it is the Lenten sea­son and there­fore Chris­tians should un­der­stand its sig­nif­i­cance. Sim­i­lar­ly, all should un­der­stand the need to keep the in­ter­ests of every­one by not hav­ing ex­tra-long an­nounce­ments at the end of a Sun­day Mass.

Alas, I di­gress, be­cause there may be a cor­re­la­tion be­tween these dis­turb­ing long an­nounce­ments that last up­wards of 10-15 min­utes and the long ex­cus­es we reg­u­lar­ly re­ceive from Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) on the ra­tio­nale for one se­lec­tor and one coach.

So to­day, I want to tell CWI we now have reached the crit­i­cal time where all ev­i­dence, all the facts and records and all the mis­takes and er­rors em­phat­i­cal­ly de­mand a change in pol­i­cy and think­ing.

The West In­dies was knocked out of the T20 World Cup in a close con­test on Sun­day. Los­ing by five wick­ets with four balls to spare. But the re­al­i­ty is that West In­dies lost. It was a fight­ing per­for­mance that would’ve sur­prised most but not all.

West In­dies (ranked 7th) de­feat­ed Scot­land (ranked 14th), Eng­land (ranked 2nd), Nepal (ranked 18th), Italy (ranked 26th) and Zim­bab­we (ranked 11th) but lost to South Africa (ranked 5th) and In­dia (ranked 1st) in that ICC (In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil) con­trived or­der when it mat­tered the most. We can con­scious­ly iden­ti­fy ar­eas of se­lec­tion, tac­tics and judge­ment calls that as­sist­ed in those de­feats.

Daren Sam­my did well, per­haps he and his team ex­ceed­ed even their hopes and de­sires but the col­lat­ed ev­i­dence sug­gests they were out-thought, out-ma­noeu­vred, and per­haps even ill-equipped in the first place.

So, I am ask­ing CWI Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO), Chris Dehring, a man I have known for a long time and while we may not al­ways agree, I have full re­spect for his knowl­edge and busi­ness acu­men, so now I am test­ing his calm de­meanour and whether he can or­ches­trate the changes need­ed and how much he is will­ing to fight for what is right. Be­cause trust me, I ex­pect him to re­ceive ob­jec­tions and ob­sta­cles to­wards any change from some who are blind­ed by the words “bu­reau­crat­ic fail­ure” as an ex­cuse for medi­oc­rity.

Some have sug­gest­ed to me that Dehring will need to walk a tightrope in the cor­ri­dors of West In­dies crick­et to bring about ma­te­r­i­al change. How­ev­er, I be­lieve that the events pri­or to this T20 World Cup ex­it, when me­thod­i­cal­ly as­sessed, can on­ly present one log­i­cal con­clu­sion and the re­moval of Sam­my as the all-for­mats coach and sole se­lec­tor gam­ble. There are ap­par­ent fis­sures in CWI which need to be prop­er­ly ad­dressed in the best in­ter­est of the Caribbean’s on­ly uni­fy­ing force.

If there was ever any doubt of the strength, love and uni­ty of West In­dies crick­et, it was to watch and lis­ten to the many res­i­dents and non-res­i­dents of the Caribbean that were moved by loy­al­ty and pride to the David Rud­der - Ral­ly around the West In­dies. Every­one, whether a crick­et fan or not, was aware of the match on Sun­day, and I would say 95 % would have watched the match from the start. Let us now al­low this mo­men­tum to fail by not al­low­ing our­selves to se­lect - hors­es for cours­es - and get­ting a prop­er Test match coach in ad­di­tion to more eyes and ears and brains in team se­lec­tion, two eyes are not good enough even with brand­ed glass­es.

The lat­est set of de­feats would have di­min­ished sup­port for Sam­my and his team (of which some must go now and be im­me­di­ate­ly re­placed), rather than con­sol­i­dat­ing it. CWI is sup­posed to have - A Crick­et Com­mit­tee- which is sup­posed to con­sist of crick­et ex­perts and so Dehring needs to give them the con­fi­dence to do their job and make prop­er crick­et­ing de­ci­sions with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion and em­bar­rass­ment.

There­fore, as we all con­grat­u­late the West In­dies on a brave ex­it, the re­al­i­ty is that the West In­dies on­ly de­feat­ed one team high­er ranked than them, in Eng­land, so while that is an im­prove­ment, it was not good enough.

Thank you, Daren Sam­my and team, but move over in Test crick­et and most im­por­tant­ly, stand by to be joined by at least two ad­di­tion­al crick­et brains to as­sist in team se­lec­tion and for that, we need men of the biggest in­tegri­ty and hon­esty and not friends and fam­i­ly of any­one close to CWI.

The road ahead for West In­dies crick­et is not look­ing bright in terms if fi­nance, as even with this loss of rev­enue from not qual­i­fy­ing for semi­fi­nals may have an ef­fect on sev­er­al planned re­gion­al tour­na­ments, with some sug­gest­ing that the re­gion­al Four Day tour­na­ment in­volv­ing six teams will have to be re­vamped in­to a short­er for­mat and some dras­ti­cal­ly sug­gest­ing that, the en­tire sea­son may be can­celled, that we know would be a trav­es­ty and call for full dis­clo­sure from CWI.

It should be not­ed that the West In­dies will re­ceive US$380,000 for fin­ish­ing in po­si­tions (5th to 12th) but have lost out on same ma­jor prize mon­ey that could have great­ly as­sist­ed West In­dies crick­et had they reached the semi­fi­nals, where they would have re­ceived US $790,000 as los­ing semi­fi­nal­ists or for play­ing the fi­nals, run­ner-up re­ceives US$1,600,000 and win­ner US$3,000,000. It ap­pears the West In­dies not mak­ing at least the semi­fi­nals may have CWI and their Ac­count­ing unit re­view­ing bud­gets.

Over to you - Chris Dehring – the ball is now in your court. Let the re­gion watch your serve!