The Independent Voice of West Indies Cricket
At the risk of being slaughtered by every West Indian at home and abroad who is looking forward to World Cup Cricket 2007 being hosted in the Caribbean, I sound an alarm.
Throughout the region, people are being encouraged to build accommodation to house the tens of thousands of cricket fans from cricketing nations and their Diaspora in places such as the United States and Canada who are expected to swarm into the area for the series.
Guyana and West Indies cricket has lost a stalwart with the recent passing of Desmond 'Watto' Watkins after a brief illness.
It's no exaggeration to say that every young cricketer in and around Georgetown came under the friendly influence and watchful eyes of Watto, a gentle man who had a soft spot for youth cricket in Guyana.
West Indies batting legend Sir Viv Richards has 21-year-old wicket-keeper Denesh Ramdin as a future captain of the Caribbean side.
"I'd put my head, whole body and soul behind that. At this stage, I'd like to think that [Shivnarine] Chanderpaul would be interim," Richards said.
At my first media conference some months ago, I made it clear that what is ahead of us is a marathon. Not a sprint.
I identified at that time (that was some time in September last year) the following priorities: Addressing the Lucky Report; resolving the impasse with the players; developing a plan through a specially appointed committee to address the WICB deficit; getting the best team from the Caribbean to Australia; meeting all Caricom Heads of governments to brief them on our plans to go forward; and winning support for putting the players under retainer contracts. We have done all these things.
When Rawl Lewis boards the flight with the West Indies team for New Zealand, he will be thinking how, for a time after he was discarded by the West Indies selectors in 1999, he almost gave up playing cricket.
He had stopped bowling; he was skylarking in the leagues in New York and was just waiting on failure with the bat to say "right, that's it." But his natural gift as a cricketer didn't allow that to happen, even as he paid little or no attention to his game.