THE WEST INDIES have gone through harrowing times for two decades now. The real possibility of failure to qualify for the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy in England is the latest worry. It is potentially the most devastating.
As tenuous as it has become and as demeaning as it is for a team that once utterly dominated the international game, the West Indies status among the top eight international teams is valued more than ever. To be absent in England two years hence would further diminish the collective interest of players and public, both now under the spell of T20.
They have participated in all seven previous tournaments, victors over England in the final at the Oval in 2004, runners-up to South Africa in Dhaka in the first in 1998 and to Australia in Mumbai in 2006. Only a quirk of the Duckworth/Lewis system that deemed their rain-reduced match against South Africa in Cardiff in 2013 a tie, with a resulting reduction in their net run rate, prevented them from advancing to the semi-final.
For all that, they remain teetering on the brink, rated No. 8 in ODIs as they are in Tests.
Repercussions from the events in India last October, when players once more distrustful of the board prematurely quit their scheduled tour, and subsequent defeats in South Africa and the World Cup, kept them there.
They have had no ODIs in the interim, no chance to clamber back on to firmer ground. There is not even a domestic 50-overs tournament before their next international engagement, a three-way series in Zimbabwe in late August when their matches against Pakistan, their erratic equivalent, will settle the last remaining Champions League place.
Both had 88 points prior to Pakistan’s on-going series of five ODIs in Sri Lanka that is level after two matches. Should Pakistan prevail in the remaining three, they would move to 92 points, a four point cushion going into the Zimbabwe showdown; defeat in the three would have the identical negative effect, leaving them four points behind the West Indies.
In other words, Zimbabwe hold the key for two teams that have both featured in every previous Champions Trophy.
The crisis they now face was sprung on them by a succession of unexpected triumphs over the past four months by a suddenly invigorated Bangladesh in their favourable home conditions.
They trounced Pakistan 3-0, and prevailed 2-1 over India and South Africa for the first time in a bilateral ODI contest. Such results propelled them to 96 points, far enough above the West Indies and Pakistan to guarantee their entry, for the first time since 2006, among the top eight as of September 30, the decisive cut-off date.
All forms of the game in the Caribbean have been afflicted by a host of self-inflicted troubles, principally strained relations between the players and the board and hopelessly haphazard planning. The latter is more specific to the regional 50-overs tournament.
The first, for the Gillette Cup, was staged in 1976. The six territorial teams were split into two zones, leading to a final; three of the scheduled seven matches were rained out. It was clearly unsatisfactory.
Only three times in the intervening 39 years, in 1982 and 2006 and 2007, has it been organised on a proper, round-robin basis, with the six teams playing each other for a minimum of five qualifying matches each, leading into the final in 1982 and the semis and final in 2006 and 2007.
Otherwise, the board has stuck to the mainly meaningless group arrangement.
It also increased the teams in each group, if not the standard, by adding the University of the West Indies (later Combined Campuses and Colleges) and, from time to time, Canada, Bermuda, the US, Kenya, the West Indies Under-19s and its High Performance Centre. Twice, the champions of the Windwards and Leewards (St Vincent and Antigua) played separately from their combined teams. Simultaneous West Indies overseas tours often diluted the competition even more.
For the 2016 edition, a combined ICC Americas team is to be one of the eight.
Such an arrangement contrasts with director of cricket Richard Pybus’ enacted recommendation that extended the new first-class Professional Cricket League (PCL) to two, from one, round and restricted the number of teams to the six originals – Barbados, Guyana, Leeward Islands, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago.
Its purpose is to pit “strength against strength” so as to better evaluate prospective West Indies players.
Along the way, there have been six different sponsors. As with the Red Stripe Bowl, the semi-finals and finals were staged exclusively in Jamaica, home of the beer that bore its name; in 2014, the board signed a three-year agreement with an insurance company, along with financial support from the government, to locate all the matches entirely in Trinidad and Tobago.
There has been no consistency, no continuity. The 50-overs game appears to be simply an afterthought.
Where it stands in the scheme of things was evident at the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in February and March where the West Indies were the only team without an appointed head coach. It left a new, young captain having to deal on his own with key senior players seething over the omission of the perceived leaders of the Indian tour pull-out.
The cumulative effects of such disorganisation and disorder have inevitably led to the present predicament.
Tony Cozier is the most experienced cricket writer and commentator in the Caribbean.