jack_sparrow
U19 Debutant
When you were young, did your Dad ever put a much-loved pet out of its misery?
For example, drowning an obese and arthritic cat or taking that faithful, decrepit old sheepdog behind the barn and blowing his brains away?
I only ask because if so he might be needed to do a similar job on the West Indies cricket team at some point in the near future.
Surely we are reaching that point where ending it all would be a kindness, those cricket fans who would keep the Windies alive are surely remembering how things used to be and not how they are.
After all, it isn't 1994 anymore and Brian Lara is no more capable of taking this team back to the top than George Headley.
These walking adverts for euthanasia are in Australia at the moment, struggling to keep the head above water in tour matches in between humiliating Test defeats.
A draw in Melbourne against Victoria over the weekend was the latest heartbreaking instalment, the tourists getting a draw from a three-day game they might have lost by an innings had the hosts had more time.
Brad Hodge helped himself to 177, easy runs even for a man accustomed to making centuries in his sleep in the English county championship.
David Hussey, not even the best batsman in his family for the Windies to worry about, also made a ton out of 571 off 122 overs before taking the final wicket in a reply of 302.
Had time constraints not brought a merciful end to proceedings at that stage the umpires would surely have considered stopping the match for safety reasons.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul now has four days to try and regroup for the second Test as the Windies harbour forlorn hopes of squaring the series.
He will be able to call on the fading light of Brian Charles in Hobart but little else extra, these are terrible days for the nation many believe had the best team ever.
That era seems relatively recent, perhaps because the emergence of Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose meant that the Windies had the best pacemen in the world long after their true golden age.
In retrospect, those two were papering over the cracks more than any of us realised.
Think about it - during the last three years the Windies have boasted three all-time greats of the game.
Yet during the same period they have avoided being the worst team in the world only by an execrable England team or Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.
There is a frightening list of players to wear the famous maroon cap in recent years: the fast bowling hall of shame alone is standing room only thanks to such luminaries as Cuffy, Cummins, MacLean, Gibson, Dillon, Rose et al.
Chanderpaul himself has been a top player and Ramnaresh Sarwan has had his moments but the subsequent quality gap in the last decade is astonishing.
Lara's autobiography after the 375 spent much time contemplating the talent drain; it was published a decade ago and not a single top player has been produced since.
C365 correspondent Shiraz Peer this weekend called for their relegation to a new second division of Test cricket.
This is a sort of toned-down version of my dissolution proposal: let's put the Windies in a home rather than a cemetery.
Lara ending his career against USA and Namibia would be enough to make a grown man cry, though he might get past 400 before hanging up the willow.
Moreover, these things are usually cyclical so logic and history suggest that the Windies will come again.
It makes sense to remain patient and await a recovery.
The vital signs are less than encouraging at the moment, however.
If they cannot use the 2007 World Cup as a springboard then maybe it really is time to accept that they are no longer good enough to compete at the highest level.
The concept of Test cricket without the West Indies is absurd but perhaps we should start thinking the unthinkable.
Link
For example, drowning an obese and arthritic cat or taking that faithful, decrepit old sheepdog behind the barn and blowing his brains away?
I only ask because if so he might be needed to do a similar job on the West Indies cricket team at some point in the near future.
Surely we are reaching that point where ending it all would be a kindness, those cricket fans who would keep the Windies alive are surely remembering how things used to be and not how they are.
After all, it isn't 1994 anymore and Brian Lara is no more capable of taking this team back to the top than George Headley.
These walking adverts for euthanasia are in Australia at the moment, struggling to keep the head above water in tour matches in between humiliating Test defeats.
A draw in Melbourne against Victoria over the weekend was the latest heartbreaking instalment, the tourists getting a draw from a three-day game they might have lost by an innings had the hosts had more time.
Brad Hodge helped himself to 177, easy runs even for a man accustomed to making centuries in his sleep in the English county championship.
David Hussey, not even the best batsman in his family for the Windies to worry about, also made a ton out of 571 off 122 overs before taking the final wicket in a reply of 302.
Had time constraints not brought a merciful end to proceedings at that stage the umpires would surely have considered stopping the match for safety reasons.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul now has four days to try and regroup for the second Test as the Windies harbour forlorn hopes of squaring the series.
He will be able to call on the fading light of Brian Charles in Hobart but little else extra, these are terrible days for the nation many believe had the best team ever.
That era seems relatively recent, perhaps because the emergence of Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose meant that the Windies had the best pacemen in the world long after their true golden age.
In retrospect, those two were papering over the cracks more than any of us realised.
Think about it - during the last three years the Windies have boasted three all-time greats of the game.
Yet during the same period they have avoided being the worst team in the world only by an execrable England team or Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.
There is a frightening list of players to wear the famous maroon cap in recent years: the fast bowling hall of shame alone is standing room only thanks to such luminaries as Cuffy, Cummins, MacLean, Gibson, Dillon, Rose et al.
Chanderpaul himself has been a top player and Ramnaresh Sarwan has had his moments but the subsequent quality gap in the last decade is astonishing.
Lara's autobiography after the 375 spent much time contemplating the talent drain; it was published a decade ago and not a single top player has been produced since.
C365 correspondent Shiraz Peer this weekend called for their relegation to a new second division of Test cricket.
This is a sort of toned-down version of my dissolution proposal: let's put the Windies in a home rather than a cemetery.
Lara ending his career against USA and Namibia would be enough to make a grown man cry, though he might get past 400 before hanging up the willow.
Moreover, these things are usually cyclical so logic and history suggest that the Windies will come again.
It makes sense to remain patient and await a recovery.
The vital signs are less than encouraging at the moment, however.
If they cannot use the 2007 World Cup as a springboard then maybe it really is time to accept that they are no longer good enough to compete at the highest level.
The concept of Test cricket without the West Indies is absurd but perhaps we should start thinking the unthinkable.
Link
) team in the world on their (Australia's) own shores, as Pakistan and New Zealand just did before them. Actually, those tours fuelled much talk of how the Australians were so far ahead of everybody else that test cricket was in a parlous state - and look what happened when Australia set sail for England.
