Finally the real problems plaguing West Indies cricket are being exposed; as we all should have guessed by now Brian Lara was not the problem. He has his flaws and these were used to create a smoke screen to hide the true problems. His great performances carried the entire team including the perennial under achievers,who i call "passengers". As a captain he had very little choice but to be inovative at times grasping at straws (remember Fidel Edwards' debut; he was Lara's pick based on a net session). Well the glaring truth is there for us all to see that Brian Lara was not the problem, just a genius among "passengers".

Though West Indies may not necessarily be better without Lara, that in itself is not a valid reason for the great man to come out of retirement.

I'm never comfortable with such returns - once a player retires, he loses that zeal to fight on the field, the centuries and the wickets do not matter - like attaining nirvana of some sort. Coming back from retirement has never helped any team. Lara is better off where he is currently, even if he does come back he cannot realistically play for more than 1-1.5 years, and that can only make the team more irresponsible, as was the case when he was in the team.

It's better if players like Bravo, Sarwan and Samuels put their hand up and start performing in proportion to their talents. Samuels for one infuriates me like nothing else. He should have been one of the leading batsmen in the world by now but he is batting at seven in a weak Windies line up.

No, Lara is not the answer to Windies' problems, in fact, one player can never be THE solution for a team; they just need a much higher level of commitment, concentration and other much talked about qualities which make a good team.

Sorry, Mr Steen, but I'm rooting unashamedly for England, as I do in any sport. It's the country where I was born and bred, just like (most of) the players.

Yes, I remember the West Indies team of the 1980s/early '90s playing some superb cricket, but the successors to all those greats jut haven't emerged. Their present team gets what it deserves, and deserves what it gets. If the present lot aren't up to scratch, is that anybody else's fault? Yes, we'd all like to see the West Indies with a team worthy of the region's cricketing history, but it has to be earned by sheer hard work. They can't expect others to do them any favours.

Meanwhile, enough with the white middle class PC handwringing, already.

Every day dah bucket goes to the well, Wan day de battam ah guh drap aff. Chanderpaul is the last of the West Indian heroes. England, it is your turn to help out. County cricket need some West Indian cricketers there again. The caribbean simply just does not have the infrastructure to support the young talents. Most WI cricketers of the 70s & 80s learned their trade playing county cricket.

Great batsman, terrible captain, pathetic team man (genius rarely suffers mere mortals). The West Indies needs practice not Brian Lara. A lot of practice. The talent is there for all to see. Edwards, Powell, Taylor and Best (if they are ever picked together) would be pretty nasty over two sessions. unfortunately the fourth and fifth bowlers are always donkey droppers. Sorry, Dwayne Bravo with his slower ball and all is definitely not a serious bowling option. The batsmen are good. Just practice and a little confidence will sort out most issues. Chanderpaul is doing a pretty good Lara for them right now (an extremely ugly but effective version).

This current crop of West Indian players continue to invent various ways to lose. After following these cricketing nomads I need to have a stiff drink, and visit a hypnotherapist. It would not be so bad if these individuals would fight to save a match every now and then. They don't care and right now they're letting the world know of their intentions to erase almost all the cricketing excellence the West Indies was known for. Darren Ganga could not even score fifty runs total after playing in four tests. Chris Gayle has the discipline of a brigand individual, and the bowlers could not hit "The broad side of a country barn." I am wondering why does the impotent West Indies Criket Board (WICB) not act with some self respect and deny these cricketing phonies their game checks. You can't tell me that these cricketing ignoramuses deserve payment for their embarassment to our Island region. Please someone, anyone give me a prescription for good cricket and honest hard working cricketers. Get these cricketing rejects off of the world stage, and let employ young enthusiastic cricketers who understand the importance of competition and a desire to win. If we as West Indians truly believe that "Out of many we are one," we cannot allow this debacle to continue anymore.

Having watched the talent packed Windies teams of the 80's, it is sad to see the state of West Indian cricket now. Bringing back Lara alone is not the answer. The current players must somehow find a way to step up and fight.

Yes its a big disappointment that westindies team fails so often. But this should not lead Brian lara to come out of retirement because its not an immediate solution. The current senior players have to realise how important it is to transform their ability into performance, as shown by chanderpaul. He is willing to fight even if he is playing with the tail and thats the commitment required to be shown by players like Darren ganga, Chris gayle and Ramnaresh sarvan.I also find it hard to understand why cant Westindies like most of the other test playing nations also look for a foreign coach that can bring a fresh change to the team mindset. It has to be collective effort on the part of the administration and players to sit down and look for the right solution.

Why the who-ha about the england cricket team beating the west indies. Let's not forget, it's not a side of old? Can I just bring to everyone's attention the Ashes whitewash LOL. Was it not more or less the same england team that got THUMPED. Perhaps you could say the Australians had expereience, experience being the keyword. Can the australians please come back and wipe this cheap shot smile off the England team, it's disgusting. Can Monty Panesar be provided a brown bag for the ODI's what an Ugly Mug. Sorry I don't mean to sound a scrooge against the Eng cricket team, but the west indians at the moment are playing like the Kenyan's and Not Aus, Pak, Ind or SA for Example.

I personally feel that for the betterment of West Indies cricket, the return of believe is more important then the return of Lara.

Yes,people may be right to say that the believe in them-self’s can even change the Bangladesh’s, but here the Bangladeshis do not have the past history of victories and records to rewind and look at. They have to believe on the existing experience and performance. Fortunately for West Indies we say the “return of believe”, a task simpler then the Bangladeshis.

Look at the 60’s , 70’s, early 80’s and you can find 1000 such examples of WI cricket.
Being a Pakistani I remember the Andy Roberts 10th Wicket world cup stand in which the pace attack failed to get rid of them. This is the “we can do it attitude I am referring to”

Secondly they should look at the way presently things are being managed with in the team. Should Chanderpaul not be batting a bit higher in Test matches say at one down or No 4 . Should not Cris Gyale be batting at No 5? If you look at the No. of balls the last 5 batsmen face you will find out that 50% of the deliveries are faced by Chanderpaul and the remaining 50% by the tail. How can this be changed. How can the lower order give more chances to the No 5 batsmen so that the scoreboard keeps on moving? If WI at this moment cannot find the genuine fast what about good spinners, Hunt for that?

Third and the last, all the countries of West Indies, for the lovers of Cricket, Please and I repeat please unite and remove all the Biases and thinks positively. We in Pakistan are the sufferer because of these provincial biases and look where we are and surprisingly we are still not learning. As a cricket playing nation we love you and want you to rise and rise well. Administratively when you could do it in yester years you can do it now. JUST BELIEVE “IN THE RETURN OF BELIEVE”

I am a die hard fan of Sri lanka but watching the last couple of cricket has been very upsetting to watch,to see the once mighty west indians fall to those levels,it is very disheartning to see a once much loved team just scratching along with mediocre performances, west indies cricket is something that gives all of us who love to watch cricket something special but I doubt whether that's gong to happen again in the near future, I think the team needs to really start working hard and not let petty politics ruin them, cricket is a simple game that I believe more than anything requires hard work and some commitment,so come on you windies get your act together and rock us again!

WI sucked when Lara was with them - its no different without him.

I don't care what you monkeys say, they just don't have the talent that they had from the 80s, might have to do with practice, picking the right players, the state of domestic cricket etc etc. but this just isn't that team.

I'm Australian, but the West Indies are my favourite team. As such it's very frustrating to see them lose, largely because of poor team selection. My ideal XI would be Gayle, W. Hinds, Sarwan, Chanderpaul, Samuels/Morton, Bravo, Ramdin, Mohamed, Collins, Collymore, and Edwards/Taylor/Powell. This would give them a full and VARIED bowling lineup and a decent batting team. Okay, so it may not be a great side, but it's at least competitive.

Four months ago after a drunken night out and after the Kiwis had successfully denied the Australians for a third time, I announced West Indies as the champions in the 2007 World Cup. It was 5 am in a crowded Indian restaurant in New York and I was glad to have made it out alive. The notion of West Indies as champions was very romantic, having seen many aunts in India who only followed Cricket when the West Indies were involved and recalling tales of yore from previous generations, it is a shame to see them fall from grace (quite literally!)
People like Samuels, Gayle and Bravo need to play with passion and commitment to the team. The team selectors have to invest faith in a core group of young talented players to carry them into the next decade. They need to promote players like Sammy, Bravo and Morton who infuse life into the game. They are failing miserably; guys like Devon Smith haven't fully delivered on their promises yet – they need to be told to leave. They need a strong captain and I think they made the right move in appointing Sarwan. He is the right man for the job and his experience will no doubt help him in leading the youngsters forward. I wish the West Indies all the luck in their upcoming endeavours

As has been mooted, the Windies have fantastic talent - but I do say that about Bangladesh, and once upon a time Zimbabwe, and whilst the Banglas are in the ascendancy, they're not quite "top flight" yet, as it were.

Nowadays, I fear, neither are the West Indies. Whilst four of their top seven boast respectable batting averages, these must be taken in context; Gayle is mercurial and Sarwan ill-fated. People like Morton, Joseph, the Smiths, Ramdin, Samuels, etc...all show talent in bursts, all show ill discipline and some distinctly poor attitudes. Chanderpaul, increasingly with Bravo's gutsy backup, is the only touchstone for the batting order.

The bowlers? Best, Edwards, Powell, Taylor, and a half dozen more - given every chance, shown their destructive power, but never learnt the discipline any decent bowler needs. Corey Collymore increasingly looks like a broken-down gelding, still bravely trying to carry its rider home, weighed down by so much baggage.

Chris Gayle, and to a degree Rammy Sarwan, need to step up and take lessons from the stodgy master, Chanders. Discipline, territorial possession, and brains. Maybe then they can give a bowling attack consisting of Collymore, Bravo's slow ball, and possibly a promising debutant from St Lucia, a little more to bowl at.

The need for a new Windies captain after the World Cup may have been justified but on the test arena, they still need Brian Lara. He could have played as a batsman in tests atleast for 3-4 years. Giving that there was no one apart from chanderpaul making a stand, it wdnt be silly to think had Lara been there the series would have been much closer and Englands No. 2 test ranking wd have looked questionable...Hope what tha West Indians cdnt do, the Indians wd be able to(though seems highly unlikely) give a stiff test to England and challenge its credential as the best test team on the planet ..after 'everyone-knows-who' ......A U S T R A L I A

Curtly
Man you were one of the greatest fast bowlers in the history of the game. Your pre-game attention to detail was second to none. Curtly, you understood the historical importance of West Indian cricket, as it related to our Island region. This current group of "Cricketing Prodigal Sons" don't particularly care about cricket. It is obvious that when folks like Chric Gayle, Sarwan, and Samuels walk to the crease, they're thinking about everything else, except maintaining a focus on run production. Repeated discipline in anything leads to consistency and maybe even perfection. Even though perfection maybe in the rear view mirror of West Indian cricket, decency should not be foreign to us. International integrity should be the goal of anyone wanting to represent the West Indies in cricket. Enough with the excuses, lets get down to cricketing fundementals and just play the game to inspire all those around you. Curtly, for my money you were along with Roberts, Marshall, and Garner part of my all time West Indian starting four Fast bowlers. No disrespect to Walsh, Croft, Holding, Hall and Griffith, but all I have left are those fond memories of a bygone era of greatness.

Bringing back Lara ( or he himself coming back ) into the West Indian team , is NOT a solution. As mentioned by several men before me , the performances with him being in the team weren't great anyways.
Ensuring that the talent that they ahve fulfills their potential , should be critical to the West Indian plan of things. Take for instance Jerome Taylor .. He was a sensation in the period in and around the Champions Trophy .. But he is no where close to producing the same kind of performances now. Or Marlon Samuels for that matter. Am sure he can do better than score a couple of blitzkriegs against the Indians.
Invest in guys like Tino Best , who have the heart for a fight (though not the brains).
More A tours as well.
Lets hope and pray for a revival to start sooner..

Folks need to understand that fifty runs does not make you a great cricketer. Ramnaresh Sarwan is a failure, Chris Gayle needs to remove his sunglasses and Marlon Samuels should let his ability at the crease speak for itself. Sarwan was highly touted to be "Khanai" for the twenty first century, what a joke. Sarwan could not bat his way out of a wet paper bag. Fundamentally, Sarwan does not like the rising ball on his body. A top notch batsman at test level must be able to play the rising ball. Chris Gayle does not move his feet across the moving ball, and is therefore always suspect to good swing bowling. Samuels thinks that one glorious shot is what cricket is about. The idiot West Indies Cricket Board should go to Barbados and seek out Seymour Nurse. Uncle Seymour right this minute could show these guys a thing or two about batting. Why is it necessary for we West Indians to employ Australians to teach us to improve in cricket, when we have the likes of Weekes, Sobers, Richards,Khanai,Nurse,Kallicharan, Lloyd, Rowe, Lara, Richardson, Grenidge, Haynes, Gibbs,Roberts, Holding, Croft, Garner, Abrose,and Walsh. We don't need to send young West Indian prospect half way around the world, so that the competition (Australia)can understand their cricketing and intellectual weaknesses. We need to shore up our cricket facilities in the West Indies, and employ our national heroes to teach our young players. Countries like England, Australia and New Zealand still somehow regard the West Indies, India, Sri Lanka and the teams that were once colonies with darker skin people as subservient and in need of help from their colonial masters. Make no mistake about what I have said here, This game of cricket transcend's the field of play and enters into the field of life.

Uncle Seymour right this minute could show these guys a thing or two about batting. Why is it necessary for we West Indians to employ Australians to teach us to improve in cricket, when we have the likes of Weekes, Sobers, Richards,Khanai,Nurse,Kallicharan, Lloyd, Rowe, Lara, Richardson, Grenidge, Haynes, Gibbs,Roberts, Holding, Croft, Garner, Abrose,and Walsh

I Guess the west indies should take a break from cricket for a couple of years and then come back to play cricket. It is really depressing and humiliating to see the way they are losing. i have been a west indies fan from the last 10 years. Every time they lose i wish this will will be my last time i will watch any matches they play and every time they play i break my promise and rout for them shamelessly. We west indies fans deserve much better...

Brian Lara is better off being away from WI cricket?!!..what non-sense!!..Forget about WI cricket, i dont see how the ICC is going to allow them to play TEST cricket for more than 12 months...Can they get better with/without LARA...?? NO..Lara doesn't matter..i dont think WI can ever get better..no, NEVER...but CRICKET needs a LARA...he was such a jewel! Anyone challenging me VIV or Lloydy could've "inspired" this current bunch...come on , anyone there??

Pavan, a hiatus is certainly not the answer and the depression and humilation will last as long as our cricketers are ignorant of the history of west indies cricket. Perhaps the best solution would be performance pay...maybe that would erase some of the obvious disinterest that some of our players show on the field.

Bringing back Brian Lara can help but is the the solution to West Indies poor performances. Their performing less than the Bangladeshi Cricket Team in my opinion. I am a die hard West Indian Cricket fan because I myself am a West Indian. They need discipline and a whole new staff for coaching, etc. The team now has the potential to beat Australia. I know many people would say that is crazy but if the just put some thought, technique (Bowling, Batting, and Fielding) and just have some faith in themselfs and put the ball in the right areas and bat for as long as you could. I think the West Indies Cricket Team and all the Boards need some reminders to have a sense of pride for their country and what it means to be a West Indian.

The regional heads of government should convene a meeting, around which they should offer an ultimatum to the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Cricket Team. Every test team can occasionally lose a test match or test series, but this "Motley Crew" of cricketing misfits have gone to the apex of losing offialdom. The WICB should all resign, they are chiefly the officionados of nonthingness. If West Indies cricket was a "Prize Fight" the fight would have been stopped a long time ago. The old saying that "Cricket is a game of glorious uncertainty" has been proven to be not true by this current crop of cricketing misfits and their selectors, and cricketing leadership. Not only should Lara be brought back, but to be absurd we should bring back the 3W's, Sobers, Richards, Khanai, LLoyd, Roberts, Holding, Marhall, Garner, Croft, Ambrose, Walsh, Dujon, Rowe, Kallicharan, Lara, Headley and the ghosts of the past. Someone out there with some power, please ask these "Cricket Criminals" to leave the world stage so we can have some cricket redemption.

The current structure of professional cricket is the main reason why we struggle to develop better players. In the past, most of these young players, with talent would have been scooped off into county cricket or league and would have developed the professionalism. If you only play 8 or 9 professional games then you will be a poor cricketer. The talent is still there, but we need a much better structure to hone it. I suggest, a total revamping of our regional cricket from islands against islands to clubs against clubs. The sponsors would easily see the benefit and join in. Each country can have up to 2 clubs and the players can come from anywhere. There coul;d be a stipulation about how many home players. I can see with good administration this could work and.... ( oh hell...WICB) alas

A house devided against itself can never stand. We West Indians seem to be our own worst enemines. If we spend some time supporting each other we can go foward.
Brian was our one world class batsman. If the other batsmen played around him we could have beaten the world. Yes including the Aussies. Insted what do we do critise and push him out of the game. As for his off field exploits most great westindians were also graet limers (Sobers Viv). Performace on the field of play is what matters!!! As far as I am concerned party all night if you can score a centry yhe next day, if you can't the stay at home and practice. Bring back Lara as a batsman so that the young players can have someone to learn BATTING from. The rest of the side should start taking themselves seariously. How on earth any self respecting top order batsman can allow himself to be consistently be out scored by the allrounder is beyond me! Team rally around yourselves West Indians need you

The morons that are the administrative heads of West Indies cricket should be ran out of the West Indies. These non-performers continue to collect paychecks while good cricket vanishes away into an abysmal wasteland of cricket misfits and mediocrity. Corporations the world over continue to demand productivity from their boards of directors, while the West Indies Cricket Board continues to operate on the premise that "Less is best." This group of West Indian Cricket Board members are the worse group of cricketing administrators in the History of West Indies Cricket. The problems with West Indies Cricket are multi-layered problems emblematic of complete lack of enthusiasm, on the players and board's part. The players feel that this cricketing maladministration, offers up an across the board lack of support for the West Indies Players Association (WIPA)and the rank and file players. When all around these young players fail, who can or should the players go to? Right now the answer to that question is easy, there's no one to go to. These cricket "Experts" known as the WICB are incapable of instilling a winning attitude in the young cricketers of the West Indies. The Board therefore gets a big "F" for failure as far as I'm concern.

What we need is a change. Change the old thinking from the top. Change the way we train from the lowest to the highest. Develop the mental aspect of players. Educate them on our proud history. Without this we will not get better.
The administration of the past cannot continue to run this body as we did in the 80's. We had a bunch of hungry talented individuals that saw it themselves to be number one. Now we have few talented, lazy, individuals who thinks they are indispensable.
Get rid of then and start over.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The West Indies Cricket Board is a corrupting and corruptable force, upon which failure is absolute. Those who have coveted power for years in West Indies Cricket must now walk away from that power, in order for betterment to occur in West Indies Crucket. There has been an invasion into the West Indian Cricket psyche that relies now more than ever on mediocrity, second class cricketing citizenship and nonthingness. This lack of spirit will lend itself to an across the board regional melancholy which will invade our regional identity. This is no indictment in totality of the West Indies Cricket Board for the social ills of the West Indies, but this cricketing mediocrity has opened up a virtual social nightmare in our Island region. We in the caribbean for centuries have been judged on the pride in our work. When West Indians the world over produce anything, whether it was a piece of woodwork or an inning of cricket, it spoke volumes about our craftmanship. Today I am witnessing a dedication to mediocrity instead of a dedication to craftmanship. It was once said that Sir frank Worrell "Was a man incapable of an inelegant act." Please someone reading this blog, I am a rotund forty seven year old West Indian in love with the past. Please allow me at least in this life time the pleasure of having at least one West Indian Cricket hero. If that requires bringing Brian Charles Lara back, so be it. I would rather watch an innings of greatness from Lara, or any of the wonderful players on the world stage than a pocket full of money. The money will go, but the memory of greatness is for a lifetime. I remember Lawrence Rowe's (302) at Kensington Oval, Barbados as a young boy. What a majestic player. I remember Greg Chappell's wonderful stroke play, Sunil Gavaskar's excellence, Javid Miandad's brilliance, Thompson and lilly's Fire, Viv Richard's ferocity and the greatest seven fast bowlers ever to play on one team, Roberts,Holding, Croft, Garner, Marshall, Walsh and Ambrose. I admit I'm spoiled, but I hope to see a change in West Indies Cricket in my lifetime.

Yea andrew ramdat is right!

Bringing back Brian Lara can help but is the the solution to West Indies poor performances. Their performing less than the Bangladeshi Cricket Team in my opinion. I am a die hard West Indian Cricket fan because I myself am a West Indian. They need discipline and a whole new staff for coaching, etc. The team now has the potential to beat Australia. I know many people would say that is crazy but if the just put some thought, technique (Bowling, Batting, and Fielding) and just have some faith in themselfs and put the ball in the right areas and bat for as long as you could. I think the West Indies Cricket Team and all the Boards need some reminders to have a sense of pride for their country and what it means to be a West Indian.