Derrick Nicholas Strikes Again

Just four days after an embarrassing handwriting mix-up made a hash of the ODI team announcement, the West Indies Cricket Board's (WICB) cricket operations officer has again exposed his carelessness.

Derrick Nicholas, the man in charge of preparing and distributing the board's press releases issued a statement late Thursday with the following subject line: West Indies "B" Team Selecions.

It might look like we're nit-picking about the 'selecions' typo in Nicholas' announcement but, coming less than a week after the C-Baugh/C-Paul team announcement screw-up, we really did expect him to make a special effort to clean up his work.

For him to make a spelling error in the subject line of an official communication from the WICB so soon after just shows the level of disinterest among some of the board's employees in Antigua.

Is it too much to expect Nicholas to spend an extra minute re-reading his press releases to avoid inaccuracies? Is it too much to expect him to run a simple spell-check of documents coming out of the WICB office?

As the board's point man for communications, Nicholas is the public face of West Indies cricket. His e-mail announcements go out to journalists from every major news organisation in the world (we know because he has exposed the e-mail list more than once). When the slapdash nature of Nicholas' work is broadcast around the world, he brings shame and humiliation to the WICB and the West Indian people.

Nicholas is not alone with the carelessness. Last May, when the WICB sent a press release announcing that Pepsi would continue to be a sponsor of the game in the region, the subject line of that e-mail read: WICB NEWS RELEASE: Pepsi And Windies Cricket Ass For More!

That 'Ass For More' email was distributed by Saunders-Franklyn Associates (SFA), a Barbados-based consultancy that no longer handles the board's PR. Over the years, SFA has been known to make numerous corrections to press releases because of sloppy errors.

Do you want to know what SFA is doing these days? Handling PR for Chris Dehring's ICC Cricket World Cup 2007.