Pre­am­ble to the Analy­sis

Be­ing a glut­ton for West In­dies pun­ish­ment, I sac­ri­ficed much-need­ed sleep af­ter long days of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty to watch the West In­dies or­ches­trate yet an­oth­er sham­bol­ic per­for­mance. And while it was tak­ing place over two and a half days in In­dia, I be­gan to pon­der the de­f­i­n­i­tion of mad­ness: ‘do­ing the same thing over and over yet still want­i­ng change.’ As such, I de­cid­ed to look for out­liers. Two-Tier Test Crick­et came to mind. The fol­low­ing is ground­ed in ra­tio­nal­i­ty with­out the temp­ta­tions of nos­tal­gia for the hal­cy­on days of West In­dies crick­et. Ul­tra­na­tion­al­ists will tear in­to the idea, but some­times to reach the hori­zon, it be­comes nec­es­sary to lose sight of the shore, even if tem­porar­i­ly.

The Germ of an Idea: An Out­lier

West In­dies crick­et is again un­der the mi­cro­scope af­ter suf­fer­ing an­oth­er hu­mil­i­at­ing test loss to In­dia by an in­nings and 140 runs in­side three days. This de­feat comes on the heels of a 3-0 white­wash by Aus­tralia ear­li­er this year in the Caribbean, which was high­light­ed by the West In­dies be­ing bowled out for just 27 runs—their low­est-ever Test to­tal. Ahead of the cur­rent two-test se­ries against In­dia, the West In­dies face an­oth­er daunt­ing two-test se­ries against New Zealand, ‘Down Un­der’. If re­cent form is any in­di­ca­tion, the West In­dies risk adding fur­ther de­feats to an al­ready grim record.

Af­ter the de­feat in In­dia, Cap­tain Ros­ton Chase ac­knowl­edged the scale of the chal­lenge, ad­mit­ting the prob­lems are sys­temic – in­fra­struc­ture, pitch­es, train­ing fa­cil­i­ties, fi­nances and even slow out­field­ers! These prob­lems are not tem­po­rary but struc­tur­al and can­not be re­solved by nos­tal­gic ap­peals to past glo­ries. And if the prob­lems are bad for the men’s team, the chal­lenges of the women’s team are even more colos­sal, as the strate­gic de­vel­op­ment of re­gion­al women’s crick­et is al­ready well be­hind oth­er es­tab­lished coun­tries such as Aus­tralia, Eng­land and In­dia. But the is­sues re­lat­ed to the women’s game must not get lost in the men’s is­sues. They will there­fore be right­ful­ly treat­ed sep­a­rate­ly.

Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) recog­nised the sys­temic is­sues in Au­gust 2025, con­ven­ing a two-day strat­e­gy sum­mit in Trinidad. Ad­min­is­tra­tors, crick­et leg­ends, and coach­es call for re­forms to re­vive the game. The short-term and long-term plans an­nounced in­clude re­cruit­ing spe­cial­ist coach­es, es­tab­lish­ing a new High-Per­for­mance Cen­tre, stan­dar­d­is­ing youth acad­e­mies, and cre­at­ing a stronger na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment frame­work. These steps are nec­es­sary but will take time to pro­duce re­sults.

Mean­while, the team con­tin­ues to strug­gle against the top teams, of­ten with hu­mil­i­at­ing out­comes. If New Zealand de­liv­ers an­oth­er sweep, the West In­dies will sink deep­er in­to the abyss of the cur­rent World Test Cham­pi­onship 2025-27 (played 7, lost 7) be­fore any of CWI’s re­forms can bear fruit. Hence the need for deep-seat­ed de­lib­er­a­tion for the case of a two-tier test sys­tem.

Un­der a two-tier mod­el, the top-per­form­ing na­tions com­pete in the first tier, while strug­gling or de­vel­op­ing teams, in­clud­ing the West In­dies, Bangladesh, Pak­istan, Zim­bab­we, Ire­land, and Afghanistan, play in the sec­ond tier. Pro­mo­tion and rel­e­ga­tion will en­sure com­pet­i­tive bal­ance, but the ICC has a crit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty: the sys­tem must not on­ly sep­a­rate stronger from weak­er teams, but it must al­so fi­nan­cial­ly in­cen­tivise the sec­ond tier, pre­vent­ing coun­tries from be­ing ce­ment­ed in low­er-tier sta­tus. Trans­par­ent de­lib­er­a­tions and clear­ly stat­ed out­comes are es­sen­tial to en­sure the mod­el sup­ports de­vel­op­ment rather than deep­en­ing in­equal­i­ty.

For the West In­dies, the sec­ond tier could pro­vide breath­ing room. In­stead of be­ing over­whelmed by In­dia or Aus­tralia, they will play teams clos­er in strength, re­build con­fi­dence, and pre­pare play­ers un­der CWI’s new­ly an­nounced coach­ing and acad­e­my ini­tia­tives. Vic­to­ries against these sides may not have the glam­our of de­feat­ing Eng­land at Lord’s, but they re­store cred­i­bil­i­ty and of­fer a path to long-term com­pet­i­tive­ness. At least win­ning can be­come a re­newed norm rather than los­ing.

Crit­ics have spo­ken about rev­enue loss from few­er mar­quee tours, but emp­ty sta­di­ums and pre­dictable thrash­ings al­ready erode the val­ue of West In­dies Tests. Per­for­mance, not his­to­ry, must dic­tate the tra­jec­to­ry in the con­tem­po­rary pe­ri­od. A prop­er­ly struc­tured two-tier sys­tem, with ICC trans­paren­cy and fi­nan­cial sup­port, may of­fer a path­way out of the test per­for­mance morass where a sus­tain­able fu­ture and de­vel­op­ment path­ways are clear.

The Au­gust sum­mit demon­strat­ed that CWI is fi­nal­ly will­ing to take ac­tion. A two-tier test sys­tem may not be pun­ish­ment but a life­line to help the West In­dies trans­form em­bar­rass­ment in­to hope while en­sur­ing the ICC ful­fils its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to glob­al crick­et eq­ui­ty.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.