Ah, Sun­day! My sa­cred day for be­com­ing one with the so­fa, per­fect­ly po­si­tioned for max­i­mum sports ab­sorp­tion. This past Sun­day, how­ev­er, was less about bliss­ful re­lax­ation and more about brac­ing for im­pact. Could the West In­dies, af­ter their rather en­thu­si­as­tic ca­pit­u­la­tion in the first One Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI), pos­si­bly pull off a vic­to­ry against Eng­land?

I con­fess, the thought of a pre-dawn wake-up call to wit­ness po­ten­tial dis­ap­point­ment was as ap­peal­ing as Crix is to quench one’s thirst. I mean, wak­ing up at some un­god­ly hour to watch po­ten­tial sport­ing heart­break is not my idea of a good time. So, I tuned in a bit lat­er and was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to find Bran­don King and Kea­cy Car­ty do­ing their best im­per­son­ation of ac­tu­al bats­men, aid­ed by the brave (or per­haps, be­wil­dered) young Jew­el An­drew, who was sac­ri­ficed at the al­tar of open­ing the in­nings.

In­deed, I like young An­drew as I gen­uine­ly be­lieve he has tal­ent (there I go again). But for the life of me, why, in the hal­lowed halls of West In­dies crick­et wis­dom, would the es­teemed coach­ing staff send a young­ster, fresh to the Eng­lish con­di­tions, to open on a pitch that was less “bat­ting par­adise” and more “bowler’s de­light”? The bowlers had some­thing in the pitch once they were pre­pared to bend their backs, but once you got in and rode some luck, a good score was there for the bats­men.

Eng­land, hav­ing won the toss, clear­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed ear­ly move­ment. And who, pray tell, was deemed most suit­able to face this ear­ly on­slaught? Not Amir Jan­goo, who, de­spite re­cent strug­gles, was se­lect­ed for this very tour and is an open­er, as he re­cent­ly opened the bat­ting for the T&T Le­gions in the Break­out League.

No, the re­sponse was “Here’s the kid!”

I know Jan­goo has not been in good form and did not look like the com­mand­ing Jan­goo of a sea­son ago dur­ing the Break­out League, how­ev­er, I would have thought the best thing would be to give him an op­por­tu­ni­ty where he may feel less score­board pres­sure and pro­mote him to open. Against Ire­land and the first ODI in Eng­land, Jan­goo bat­ted down the or­der, and he nev­er looked com­fort­able.

To make mat­ters worse, young An­drew has been play­ing a se­ries of T20 and 50-over games when he might be bet­ter served in the game’s longer for­mat, per­haps play­ing for West In­dies A in the un­of­fi­cial Tests against South Africa A. I hope he does not get in­to bad habits with his bat­ting, as I saw him play some un­con­ven­tion­al shots (pure “voops”) in the Break­out League. En­ter­tain­ing? Ab­solute­ly. Test match ma­te­r­i­al? About as much as the oth­er F1 cars’ chances of catch­ing McLaren this sea­son. What a pity.

The West In­dies hi­er­ar­chy and their non­sense have tak­en me com­plete­ly off course, so back to my Sun­day morn­ing phone call. “Morn­ing,” I hear. My abrupt “Yes, morn­ing” clear­ly con­veyed my de­sire for un­in­ter­rupt­ed sport­ing bliss. “You see to­day’s Guardian?” Oh, the dread. “No,” I mum­bled, al­ready pre­dict­ing the next sen­tence. “The TTCB wants the po­lice to stop the probe!” My jaw hit the floor faster than the West In­dies mid­dle-or­der los­es wick­ets. “You’ve got to be kid­ding me! They’re telling the Po­lice how to do their job now?” Any­way, the caller, bless their per­sis­tent soul, ram­bled on for a sol­id 45 min­utes, while I, with one eye on the crick­et, dis­pensed in­ter­mit­tent com­men­tary. Even­tu­al­ly, I sur­ren­dered. At the end of the day, I gave up as I couldn’t care less what, how, and why the TTCB does things. My re­al con­cern lies with the crick­eters, the clubs, and the over­all pro­gres­sion of the game here in T&T, and by ex­ten­sion, the en­tire re­gion.

Hon­est­ly, the way things are un­fold­ing, the ul­ti­mate ca­su­al­ty of this ad­min­is­tra­tive bac­cha­nal will be crick­et it­self, along with the dreams of young as­pir­ing crick­eters. I note that Sports Min­is­ter Phillip Watts is keep­ing a watch­ful eye; maybe he may be the sav­ing grace that crick­et needs at the end of all of this. I gen­uine­ly haven’t wit­nessed such lev­els of ad­min­is­tra­tive the­atre since I start­ed play­ing crick­et a few years ago as a 12-year-old school­boy at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege.

On the field of play, things are equal­ly per­plex­ing. I wish I could ask the Po­lice to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ab­ject fail­ure of the per­for­mances of all the West In­dies teams, from the 50-over team (not to de­feat Ire­land in a se­ries is like a loss), to the se­nior women and the WI A team.

They’ll cite “tran­si­tion” and “new coach­ing staff,” but it of­ten feels like a one-per­son show, with de­ci­sions so “strange” (a po­lite eu­phemism, if ever there was one) that West In­di­an fans are left col­lec­tive­ly clutch­ing their chests in agony. So many con­cerned fans have stopped this hum­ble colum­nist, ask­ing, “What now?” What could I say but “I un­der­stand your pain”? Who is guard­ing the guards? Who is re­spon­si­ble for some of these be­wil­der­ing de­ci­sions, and are there ever any con­se­quences? We’ll just have to keep our fin­gers crossed, pray to the crick­et­ing Gods, and hope things change.

I am writ­ing this col­umn af­ter an­oth­er ham­mer­ing by an Eng­lish team in tran­si­tion with a new cap­tain in the fi­nal ODI, so the se­ries has to be de­scribed as a glo­ri­ous dis­as­ter. When you ex­am­ine the team and look at some of the play­ers, you have to ask your­self, why can’t they de­feat Eng­land? Some­thing is wrong; some good play­ers are mak­ing up the team, but it is not some­thing on the sur­face; it seems to go deep­er than that. Think about it.

With the T20 se­ries now kick­ing off, changes have been made, as ex­pect­ed. This for­mat of­fers the West In­dies their best chance against Eng­land, as some of the more es­tab­lished T20 spe­cial­ists have come in­to the team, and the squad, with the no­table ex­cep­tion of Nicholas Pooran, seems to be the strongest avail­able. We will await the per­for­mances of the T20 squad; it can’t be any worse than the ODI team. I wish them the best of luck.

Fi­nal­ly, on a much more pleas­ant and gen­uine­ly hope­ful note, let us all de­scend up­on the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on Fri­day evening to sup­port T&T’s se­nior men’s na­tion­al team as they take on St Kitts and Nevis in a World Cup qual­i­fi­er from 7.30 pm. I know the re­sults of the games in the Uni­ty Cup were, shall we say “char­ac­ter-build­ing”, but let’s re­mem­ber that coach Dwight Yorke was fine-tun­ing his squad for the game ver­sus St Kitts and Nevis, and then they trav­el to play Cos­ta Ri­ca on June 10 in San Jose from 9 pm. I did say when Dwight was ap­point­ed, there would be some bumps in the road, but let us show con­fi­dence in what Dwight is build­ing as he de­mands the best, and he needs the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port of the en­tire na­tion.

So, let’s pack the sta­di­um in our num­bers, make some noise, and cheer St Kitts and Nevis right out of the qual­i­fiers with a re­sound­ing vic­to­ry! Good luck to Dwight and the team, T&T is be­hind you, push­ing you to­wards the next round of World Cup qual­i­fiers!