So Scotland and Ireland flogged the West Indies and kicked us to the curb. Cue the outrage and the bay for the blood of the Cricket West IndieWith Chris Dehrings president, board members, executives, selectors, coach and players. As if governance, management, selections or batting application are the root causes of the latest episode of an ever-downward, spiralling saga of indignity.

We saw it coming years ago. We tried to stop it but were ineffective and helpless. So we will swap out the personnel and try again with the promise of a new beginning. And they too will falter. If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times. West Indies cricket, that glorious institution we rightly adore, is a beautiful idea whose time has passed. I shake my head at the tattered remains to which I gave a dozen years of my life, those stadiums standing as testimony to wasted, useless, pitiful efforts. Like any product whose useful life is over, it is time to be reinvented or shelved.

There is, to state the obvious, no nation called “the West Indies”. No national team can compete in the modern paradigm of professional sports without a national production line, structure and most importantly, resources. But Caribbean governments can’t justify investing in this institution without obvious national or political benefit to be derived. Neither is there a proper professional cricket infrastructure. We have a semblance of one, but there is no managed production line from kindergarten to the pros. Every other country playing international cricket has one or the other, or both. They are able and have invested greater resources than us over the past 30 years and it is paying off.

The resource gap is mammoth and only growing larger. We scoff at Ireland beating us because of ignorance. Ireland has the second-highest gross domestic product (GDP) in Europe and is a full Test playing member of the ICC, not the “associate” that they, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh once were. They have centrally contracted professional cricketers and a first-class league. They have beaten Pakistan, England and us before, and will cause one or two more jitters in this tournament for sure. They are ranked 12th and West Indies seventh. To give a football comparison, would we be so shocked if 12th-ranked Croatia beat seventh ranked Spain in the Football World Cup. Don’t underestimate the rise of the sport in other countries through their investment, even as our own lack thereof sends us sliding. No one argues that Manchester City, Real Madrid or indeed, Ireland, have that clear resource advantage in football. Perhaps the aberration of WI cricket dominance in the past and the occasional flicker of hope, blinds us to reality.

Let me clarify what I refer to as “resources”. It is not simply money to throw at the national team, though that absence is self-evident. Take a Scottish- or an Irish-born cricketer. From an early age he is provided with national resources simply because of the wealth of the country and the proximity and availability of grade, first-class and professional cricket. There is a professional sports industry from which to draw experienced sports administrators. The facilities, coaches and general training facilities (nets, gyms, etc) available from elementary school to first-class cricket contradicts any description as “amateurs”. Indeed, they are amateur only in so far as their comparison to the highly paid professionals in the ECB Premier League. Both Scotland and Ireland have their own well developed cricket leagues that make our tournaments seem impoverished, with broadcast television deals, sponsorships, etc. Investment in Irish cricket has increased year after year by Sport Ireland (funded by a National Lottery) since their success in the 2007 World Cup, while similarly, UK Sport continues to invest in Scottish cricket and school cricket programmes. During the pandemic, both Ireland and Scotland cricket associations were subsidised by their governments to keep the fires burning. Which government helped CWI to stay alive during what must have been a terrible time for them, as it was for most businesses in the Caribbean. Let me not even mention the generous availability of cricket equipment. And I don’t mean just copious amounts of bats, balls, helmets, etc, but bowling machines, proper and readily available nets and other technical facilities. Recently the CWI president made a gift of one bowling machine to a Caribbean country, the sort of basic equipment that any cricket club, and probably school in Ireland might have five or six of.

Yet we ponder how we have fallen so far behind, beaten by “minnows”. Without national resources, we are simply unable to produce the volume of quality cricketers year after year that can compete on the global stage consistently. Our cricketers have natural athletic talent. But they are not honed professionals, developed over time through a production line. One member of our team is amongst the highest earning sportspersons in the region, a top professional cricketer who should be nearing the peak of his prowess. Yet he sports a generous paunch, surpassed only by some who narrowly missed the cut. These are amongst our best “pros”. I do not say this to be mean to these gentlemen, or as I have been accused of by some of my friends, as discriminatory. We are talking elite professional sports. Would Manchester United tolerate a rotund Cristiano Ronaldo unable to contribute in every department required of an elite professional footballer. The ever-producing production line would quickly have him replaced.

Some factors are simply beyond our control. While other nations benefitted from the multimillion-dollar explosion of sports TV rights beginning in the nineties, our paltry market generates nothing. I don’t exaggerate and mean just a little. I mean zero. India’s market is now generating billions. A friend opined that we needed to come together in the Caribbean to stop the rot. I quipped that no matter how many ways you counted five million poor people, it could not rival India’s 1.2 billion, or even Bangladesh’s 160 million TV market; or the per capita GDP of Australia, New Zealand and England. Sad to say, but in the modern sports paradigm, resources talk.

Resources are needed to fund the sport up and down the production chain and across an archipelago of disparate islands. It is not available. Neither does the geopolitics make such expenditure efficient. The ICC were shocked as to how expensive it was to host the world cup here, hotels and airfare being twice that of the same event in the UK and South Africa. WICB, CWI or the next iteration will not be able to solve these endemic inefficiencies that pilfer scarce resources.

As counter-intuitive as it might initially seem, with national resources and structure, Jamaica can become even more competitive than the WI; certainly in the T20 cricket format. Scarce resources can be focused. Athletic talent can be harnessed more efficiently. Local TV broadcasters and sponsors with zero interest in the wider region can rally and commercially exploit a national team. I have asked the question before. What did the Netherlands do to deserve to be on the international stage of the World T20 over the likes of Jamaica, Barbados, etc, given our individual and collective contributions to the sport. What will happen if as planned, cricket becomes an Olympic sport where we “Jaminate” as a nation. Some immediately point to the success of Jamaica’s athletic programme despite the lack of financial resources of richer countries. But they then fail to apply the core reason for its success, a national production line from elementary school through to “Champs” and on to the pros. The blueprint is there. But try and replicate this across nine individual sovereign countries, group us together as a fictitious, non-existent nation and call it “the West Indies”. It would fail.

The member countries of the ICC share some of the blame. The allocation of cricket’s mammoth TV revenue pie was structured to maintain the status quo. There is no consideration for WI’s unique geographic and political reality, despite our unquestioned contribution to world cricket. They finally found the formula to extract revenge for years of humiliation by our scything bats and searing bouncers. We now struggle to beat Bangladesh. Scotland and Ireland are beating us, with Afghanistan not far behind. Soon the United States with its 700 cricket clubs and valuable TV market will join the fray along with the Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, etc, all nations with national resources behind them.

The chickens are coming home to roost.

Editor’s note: Chris Dehring is the former WICB Chief Marketing Executive and CEO of ICC CWC 2007. With over 30 years in the business of sports, he has negotiated multimillion-dollar TV and sports rights deals across the world, including the English Premier League, WICB and ICC events and led the Caribbean’s hosting of Cricket World Cup in 2007. In 2001, he conceptualised and launched Sportsmax, the region’s first 24/7 sports channel, now broadcast in 26 countries, and was an integral founder of the famous ‘Mound’ party stand. He represented Jamaica in both football and cricket at the under-19 level, representing Real Mona and Kingston Cricket Club in the Major League and Senior Cup, respectively.