KEN PIESSE says it’ll take years before the once-mighty West Indies are again fixtured for the glamorous Christmas-New Year Test double in Melbourne and Sydney.
The inequality of cricket’s riches has seen the once-proud and mighty West Indies lurch into the abyss. In the Caribbean in mid-year, its national team was twice beaten well inside three days by an Australian team so vulnerable that its Ashes defense became an embarrassment.
When the Windies would once play five Tests in Australia, they are now allocated just three. If any go five full days it will be a miracle, so mismatched the two teams appear.
When the Windies once had the mightiest fast bowlers in the world, and in Brian Lara, a recordbreaker of rare gift and performance, its best XI is now a team of nobodies.
The Calypso exuberance may remain, but watching from afar in June, it seemed the Windies’ best XI would have struggled to have beaten a Sheffield Shield team, let alone an Australian side even without two of the most effective bowlers in the world in Mitchell Johnson and Mitchell Starc.
The Windies system is failing badly, the basic infrastructures for cricket a poor relation to anything on offer by the three powers India, England and Australia
The nation which once boasted the most fabulous names in the game from Richards to Holding and Lloyd to Marshall has so tumbled in the world Test rankings that only Zimbabwe is ahead. Since last being world champion 20 years ago, the Windies have tumbled from top to ninth and for the first time they failed to qualify for the eight-team Champions Trophy.