It's Like Jungle Cricket in the West Indies

Cricket in the jungle. Ken Crosbie told Dave Martins and the Tradewinds the story of the game being played in nothing but a crude and haphazard manner Sunday after church somewhere in the hinterlands.

That is the way the West Indies Cricket Board seems to want to keep things here in the Caribbean. Backward, prehistoric and jungle-like.

The World Cup will be here faster than Chris Gayle will blaze the red cherry to the boundary ropes in front the Kenny Wishart Stand at Bourda. Yet the WICB seems bent on sending the team to ?make up numbers? in South Africa. If urgent and dramatic measures are not taken as soon as ?last month? the only teams we will really be competing with are the Netherlands, Scotland and Canada.

We have too many problems for one to even mention in a single article. The players perform as single units at present, not as a team. Every man seems to go out and do what he best knows to and how he chooses to so do. If the team consisted of six Brian Laras and five Courtney Walshes then our present non-strategy would make us world beaters again.

Right now we are nothing but a wishing bunch of whipping boys. We need to gel. However we are not being given the opportunity to oil a proper team. Samuels is on crutches, Lara?s arm is in a cast, Sarwan?s spine is brittle and more names than players in any Busta Cup squad are either recovering or on the comeback trail.

The team has recently been plagued with an injury list longer than the list of days Osama bin Laden has evaded capture. What is wrong? Are Harper?s routines meant for hardened war criminals? Or do we have a bunch of coconut jelly cricketers?

I think neither. I believe that Ronald Rogers is out of his league. He may be an excellent physio but he alone cannot in these times of back to back One Dayers and four-series-a-year cricket manage to take care of a team of 14 men who push their bodies beyond what many medical practitioners would not hesitate to deem ?a dangerous periphery?.

The West Indies team needs to have more medical specialists traveling with it. The team cannot survive healthily with a single physio. We need a team doctor, sports psychologist, a chiropractor and even a masseuse to be with the guys even when they dispose of waste matter.

These guys need specialized attention as soon as they trod off the field at the end of every day of cricket. If not they will, as has been the case way too often, aggravate old injuries and have nagging jiggles that will curtail them to mediocre performances or complete non-performance.

The board needs to recognize that Merv Dillon is not ?Elephant? and Cameron Cuffy is not ?Donkey?, they are humans. And humans need specialized care and attention. Care and attention that cannot be provided solely by Ronald Rogers. He needs specialists by his side. In fact it is more a case of the specialists needing someone like him (not necessarily him) by their side. In this age of pressure cricket where science is no longer creeping into the game, but playing a critical role in it, guys like Rogers cannot be driving the car, they are just passengers in the back -- and that?s only if they?re lucky.

Two of our opening batsmen (both from the same country, makes you wonder) have heart problems. And the callous treatment(?) Gayle received for his painful heart from Rogers in Sharjah forces one to conclude that he may be more of a sailor on the job than many US Navy recruits will ever be.

The solution is simple it has been mentioned herein too many times already. We need a complete medical team to accompany and provide the medical care that 500 Ronald Rogers can never provide. Sure it will cost money, but a few board officials can enjoy three less joy rides to here, there and everywhere each year and they should be able to afford it comfortably.

If they neglect the fitness and the health of our cricketing ambassadors they will continue to look like a struggling bunch of Sunday afternoon jungle cricketers. The only thing is that Umpire Parrot would not have to fly to the hinterlands of Guyana to see them, he can sit on a branch right in Regent Street and see Rogers dart out with magic spray that has long had its magic nullified by the study of medicine and biology.