WORK and the long distance from Kingston meant I missed a lot of the regional first-class cricket at Sabina Park this season.

Give thanks for what I call the ‘two-camera cricket’ shown on the West Indies Cricket Board website. The pictures weren’t great, but they were definitely better than nothing.

That limited internet facility provided what was, for me, the most memorable moment of the 2013 regional first-class and 50-50 season. A leg break pitched on a length by the youthful Hayden Walsh of the Leeward Islands, close to lunch on the first day at Sabina, sizzled past the nose of a startled Danza Hyatt.

I remember saying to myself “this is one tough pitch for batsmen”. And indeed, from the hour or two of play that I caught on my computer, from time to time, and the three or four days I was able to spend at Sabina Park, that was my overall impression of the season. The pitches were very tough for batsmen.

Now I can hear the ‘kiss teeth’ and rejections: “Cho, yu a mek excuse fi dem; dem cyaan bat!”. That may be. The truth though is that if we keep providing pitches as bowler-friendly as in the season just past, most of our stroke-playing young batsmen will never learn to bat long.

The pitches weren’t only tough in regional matches. Those for the two Test matches against Zimbabwe were tailor-made for bowlers — more especially spinners.

Don’t take my word for it, listen to Shivnarine Chanderpaul who must be as qualified a person as there is, when it comes to talking about cricket pitches.

Having fought like a’tiger’ to make his 28th Test century in Dominica, Chanderpaul had this to say: “It was a pretty tough day, hard work. You could see it was not an easy wicket to bat on … The ball was bouncing and turning a lot, and you had to really dig in. Some of the balls were bouncing, some were keeping low, you weren’t always certain what the ball would do, so you had to stay watchful and patient, and wait on the bad balls.”

From the evidence provided by TV, he could have said pretty much the same about the pitch for the first Test in Barbados.

For me, the most disturbing aspect was the prevalent inconsistency of bounce. There were far too many cases, often from the first day, of “some of the balls were bouncing, some were keeping low”.

Consistency and predictability of bounce are prerequisites for a good cricket pitch. Even the geniuses, including Headley and Bradman, need to be able to predict the bounce in order to decide whether to go forward or back. Without the ability to predict that bounce, footwork goes to pieces. Without footwork, what is batting? Without artistic- or at the very least craftsman-like batting, cricket becomes a most depressing exercise.

All credit to the resurgent Devon Smith and the admirably patient youngster Kraigg Brathwaite for their success with the bat in the 2013 regional first-class season. But I don’t think the torturous struggle for the others was simply because “dem cyaan bat”.

There are serious inadequacies — in terms of equipment and the money to pay ground staff — surrounding the preparation of pitches in the Caribbean. I suspect that what we saw in the 2013 Caribbean season partially reflects those realities.

Memories can often be short in the Caribbean, with deadly consequences. Fifteen years ago, a Test match was abandoned at Sabina Park because the bounce was so variable and unpredictable; it was deemed “dangerous” to life and limb.

That debacle, in 1998, forced stakeholders to sit up and pay attention to pitches. That lasted for a few years. The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), at the time, even introduced a monetary prize for the “best pitch”. The strategy worked wonders, I thought. Indeed, a few of the fairest pitches to batsmen and bowlers that I have seen at Sabina Park were produced in ’99 and the early 2000s. Just as a reminder, Christopher Gayle came to early prominence on those Sabina pitches.

As we are wont to do in the Caribbean, we have allowed standards to slip. New WICB president, Mr Dave Cameron, his executive and his secretariat need to do whatever is necessary to return our pitches to a reasonable standard, consistently.

Also, it seems to me, not just administrators, but those of us analysts, commentators and reporters who talk and write about cricket, must never forget that apart from players, umpires and perhaps the weather, the most important element in a cricket match is that strip in the middle.