Tony Becca

THE SECOND Test between the West Indies and Sri Lanka is under way. The score in the two-match contest is one to Sri Lanka and zero to the West Indies.

The West Indies need to win this one to share the series and the chances are that Sri Lanka will win it and tick off their first victory in the West Indies.

It is possible, however, that the West Indies, with a little luck, or rather, with some amount of luck, could win the Test match and share the series, and although that should be good for this West Indies team, it could be a disaster for West Indies cricket.

It could be a disaster for the simple reason that instead of doing what should be done to improve the standard of the region's cricket, those in charge of West Indies cricket may, if the improbable happens, use the opportunity to step up on to the platform and, despite the poor batting averages and the bowling averages of the players, plus their inconsistency in the field, to tell the world, all the world, how talented the West Indies players are. Also, how great the West Indies team is, and most importantly, and for the umpteenth time, that they have turned the corner.

Weak West Indies team

Win, lose or draw, this West Indies team is weak, one victory will not make it strong. For it to become strong, West Indies cricket has to be strong, and for West Indies cricket to become strong once again, it will take a change, a big change at that, in the attitude of those who administer the game.

It will take, for example, a passion for the game; it will take a lot of hard work and, most importantly, it will take people, or sets of people around the territories, who realise and understand the importance of playing the game.

In other words, West Indies cricket needs people who appreciate that in order to improve, respect for the game and playing the game are most important.

West Indies cricket needs players who do not pull out of matches - club matches or first-class matches - at the slightest opportunity. It needs a board, including territorial boards, which will insist that players respect it and the territories they represent, and it needs a players' association which has respect for the game and for the board.

Regardless of the amount of money being spent, West Indies cricket will never improve, if a club team, a player, as is the case in the Jamaica Super League, plays only seven matches a season - not to mention if, in this day and age when employment in the English County Championship is limited to a few, a player plays only five or six first-class matches a season. It will never improve if a player, like Christopher Gayle, can decide not to represent his territory and particularly so in a final, turns up elsewhere for a few dollars and nothing is done about it. It will never improve if a player, the captain of the regional team, can criticise umpires and nothing is done about it; and it will never improve if a player, like Shivnarine Chanderpaul, can turn up for a match, bats, is not out, and then disappears and nothing is done about it.

If West Indies cricket is to improve, the players cannot be allowed to be a law to themselves - to do what they want when they want. If that is allowed, the players, for example, will continue to train and practise only whenever they want to, and that will certainly guarantee that West Indies cricket will never improve.

The board, the West Indies board, needs to do something about things like these. Things like these have been going on for too long. The fact that one man, or a few men, believe and behave as if they were indispensable is one reason why the West Indies team has not been performing and for too long the board has sat idly by twiddling its thumbs and doing nothing about it.

Insularity is so rife in the region that the board's job is difficult, but something has to be done if the players, and the players' association, are to respect the board.

Chanderpaul must be reprimanded for disappearing after the first day's play of the recent Carib Beer Series match between Guyana, and the Windward Islands in Guyana, and no amount of excuses by Guyana Board President Chetram Singh, who, like most of the other board presidents and board members in West Indies cricket, is known to protect players regardless, should be allowed to change that.

Chanderpaul's disappearance

What is most interesting, however, what, to me, and despite all the talk, underlines the West Indies Players' Association's (WIPA) lack of respect for the board is that Chanderpaul's disappearance was because he attended the annual banquet of WIPA in Trinidad in order to accept the association's awards as the One-Day Player of the Year, as the Test Player of the Year and as the International Cricketer of the Year.

Unless it did not matter to WIPA if the region's first-class cricketers were not present; unless it did not matter to WIPA if the winners of awards, and especially so the winners of its three-top awards, which this time was one person, were not present to accept the awards; unless playing the game is less important than anything else, then it is strange that WIPA, the president of which is a member of the board, could have arranged its banquet to clash with the last round of the board's tournament - the round which could have decided the title, and which most times does.