Beginning of end of WI T20World Cup bid

THE EDITOR: The beginning of the end of the West Indies’s T20 World Cup title bid later this year was painfully obvious on Saturday when the Caribbean side was dominated by England on home soil in Barbados without the whimper of fight or glimmer of hope in the whole match.

The Windies's bowlers were first carted to all parts of the Kensington Oval by the British in a manner that would only make the most optimistic of punters bet on the WI making the semifinals at the tournament of T20 champions.

And while the Caribbean's batters did not know what to do against the contrastingly inventive and classy bowling of the Three Lions that left even the WI’s own aged lion, Kieron Pollard, clueless before the whole world.

You see, even the regular better must know that if the WI cannot beat a top team like England three times in a row on home soil it cannot win the T20 World Cup in a few months’ time because, despite what the WI cricket officialdom is saying, the Caribbean's finest have no consistency with either bat or ball.

This is more alarming because the only WI cricketers who can repeat match-winning performances with both bat and ball, sensational Sunil Narine and Carlos Braithwaite, along with our only batter who can do this at the highest level of cricket, Shimron Hetmyer, are all mysteriously being left out of the men in maroon team.

If this madness continues in the West Indies’ T20 World Cup bid we are wasting our time even boarding the plane to this blue-ribbon event. And the hiding that the WI is going to get from India away in a few weeks is going to make crystal clear to any gambler who knows how to make money in cricket.

FITZROY OTHELLO

Princes Town