What does the U19 World Cup triumph mean for the West Indies?

Back in December I gave my thoughts on the future of West Indies cricket, during their embarrassing tour of Australia. It wasn't a positive outlook, particularly for the notion of the 'West Indies' continuing as one team.

For much of the cricketing world, their first ever success in the Under-19s World Cup is a much needed sign of something blooming in the West Indies, a sign that maybe, just maybe, things were looking up for cricket in the region. Well, I don't mean to be a downer (even if I did, Tony Cozier got there first), but this seems unlikely.

I said in December that 'the biggest problem facing the Windies is not talent.' This is evidently true, else they would not have won this World Cup. Talent has not ever, and will never, be a problem for the islands of the Caribbean. To be honest, I doubt talent is really, truly much of a problem in any country at all. Cricket is the kind of sport that really only needs a small amount of gems to create something magnificent.

As such, this win is not a sign of a turn-around in the administration or coaching of cricket across the islands. If anything, it can be attributed to the right circumstances coming at the right time. If we hold, as I do, that disunity is the fundamental problem with the West Indies, then clearly the solution is to unite them again. So, can you think of anything that happened during the U19 WC that could have united this team?

I can.

Their win over Zimbabwe.

It is unfair on mankading to call the end of that game a mankad, but whatever it actually was, it brought the ire of the majority of the cricket community on their young heads. The language of some of said ire was actually just as poor as the incident itself, and it seems to me that few things can unite a group as much as unfair criticism (perceived or real) being heaped upon them. Keep in mind, prior to this the team had been far from impressive, with just a loss to England and an untidy win over the out-of-their-depth Fiji to their name. Prior to that they had been whitewashed by the Bangladesh U19s in a pre-tournament series. Not exactly the form of a world champion.

But after the win over their poorer full member cousins (as amazing as it is that there can be teams poorer than them), the team just seemed to click. Everything started working, and nothing could stop them. They were, like the Windies teams of old, united.

But this doesn't really mean much in the long run. It's the most short-term solution you can imagine: a one-off event for a tournament most of them will never play in again, though hopefully many will end up playing in the full version in the years to come.

It does nothing to address the fundamental issues facing the senior players, a group they will soon join. It does nothing to address the fundamental issue of total disunity at the (inter)national level. If some of these players get thrown into the national squad straight away, the likely result would be another generation of players thrown away to a war that can't be won.

It's not as though the disputes between players and board have gone away. They're right there, looming over the World T20, just waiting for another chance to interfere in the playing of international cricket.

So all the best to the winning Windies, I hope they savour the victory. But I suspect many of these young men will end up playing international cricket in colours other than maroon.

(As an aside, these are the nations that these players divided into:

Antigua and Barbuda: Alzarri Joseph
Barbados: Chemar Holder, Shamar Springer
Grenada: Ryan John, Emmanuel Stewart
Guyana: Shimron Hetmeyer, Tevan Imlach, Keemo Paul
Jamaica: Shahid Crooks, Michael Frew, Odean Smith
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: Obed McCoy, Gidron Pope
Sint Maarten: Keacy Carty
Trinidad and Tobago: Jyd Goolie, Kirsten Kallicharan)

The future of West Indies cricket

There will be a lot of speculation over the coming day over the future of the West Indies. Some of this will be legitimate, pointing out long-standing difficulties that the joint cricket team has had over the past two decades. Others will be more short-sighted, and will probably disappear should the West Indies vaguely improve over the next two Tests.

It is clear that the Windies will not win this series. It is also clear that they will struggle to win. The biggest alarm bell about their performance in Hobart is that wasn't unexpected. Given the past five years of movement from the team, which has only consisted of going from bad to worse, for this once great group of nations to go from losing to a Cricket Australia XI, full of rookie players, by an innings, to losing to the Australian Test team by an innings feels almost like an improvement in and of itself – not because of their own performance, but because of the leap in quality of opposition.

This very much appears to be the worst team to tour Australia since Zimbabwe came in 2003, and we all know how far they've gone since then.

The biggest problem facing the West Indies is not talent. There is just as much potential within the peoples of the Caribbean now as it was during their heyday thirty years ago. The problem is disunity. Remember, the Windies are a group of nations. These are all independent, proud countries with their own different histories. They first came together for cricket in order to give the touring Commonwealth nations some competition, and no-one ever really thought to disband them.

By the time World Series Cricket came around, they were becoming unified not by their relationship to each other, but to that of the other nations they were up against. The West Indies cricket team was a way of getting back at the old colonial powers. It was a way for these nations to prove themselves. This was stated numerous times as being one the key factors in their unification and subsequent dominance of world cricket.

So, what happened? Well, they did it. They proved themselves on the world stage, bashed around the colonial powers and dominated cricket for years. Like all successful kingdoms and powers, they got lazy. They didn't prepare themselves for the years ahead, and seemed to presume that their dominance would just carry on.

Part of the problem, to be fair, was that much of their dominance was built on top of things outside of their control. The county championship was undoubtedly the biggest factor in getting their players to move beyond 'potential' and into greatness. As the strength of county cricket fell away during the 1990s, and the amount of West Indians entering county cricket dropped, the Caribbean domestic league was unable to take its place. Domestic cricket is not cheap to organise for the WICB, as it involves flying players to whole other countries. This, along with the region's lack of wealth, did not leave much room creating a strong domestic competition, creating a vicious cycle as the their intentional performances began to fall away, and as old greats retired. By the 2000s, the beginning of the end had come. Only in the last five years, though, has this become abundantly clear.

Today, the WICB is totally disunited, with poor domestic structures (in every way imaginable), players who aren't interested in playing for a team that isn't their own nation, players who aren't willing to give up T20 wealth for the sake of a collective group of nations, and international structures that give them no assistance other than keeping them treading water above the Associates (many of whom could beat them on a good day).

Soon, the West Indies will be no more. This seems inevitable. The question is simply whether it will happen by action, or by default. The former involves their performances collapsing to such a point that the ICC will have no choice but to prevent them from playing Test cricket, as they did with Zimbabwe, which will almost inevitably spill over into the breaking apart of the WICB. The latter will happen if cricket becomes an Olympic sport. There can be no West Indies team in the Olympics. Each nation within the WICB will be forced to compete on their own – if they can qualify at all. Should the international results continue to head south, it would not be that surprising if the collective boards decide to make this a permanent state of affairs.

The question then is what happens to these teams within the ICC. How strong would they be? Would they only be on Associate level?

It is difficult to imagine any of the individual nations within the Windward or Leeward Islands being able to put together a team that would satisfy the current ICC requirements for a full member nation, so the question is essentially being asked of four nations: Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Guyana. Here's how these teams may look at full strength if they were going to play tomorrow.

Barbados

Kraigg Braithwaite

Dwayne Smith

Jonathon Carter

Shane Dowrich

Carlos Braithwaite

Shai Hope+

Jason Holder

Ashley Nurse

Kemar Roach

Sulieman Benn

Fidel Edwards

Guyana

Rajendra Chandrika

Assad Fudadin

Leon Johnson

Shivnarine Chanderpaul

Vishaul Singh

Narsingh Deonarine

Chris Barnwell

Anthony Bramble+

Steven Jacobs

Veersammy Permaul

Devendra Bishoo

Jamaica

Chris Gayle

Kirk Edwards

Jermaine Blackwood

Marlon Samuels

Andre Russell

Carlton Baugh

Chadwick Walton+

David Bernard

Jerome Taylor

Nikita Miller

Sheldon Cottrell

Trinidad and Tobago

Kyle Hope

Lendl Simmons

Darren Bravo

Jason Mohammed

Dwayne Bravo

Yannick Ottley

Denesh Ramdin+

Rayad Emrit

Imran Khan

Ravi Rampaul

Shannon Gabriel

Each of these teams has its own strengths and weaknesses. Jamaica is essentially a Test team, with a relatively strong batting line-up, though the bowling is unimpressive. Barbados is at the opposite end of the spectrum, with good bowlers along with more all-rounders, though the weakness of their batting leaves them looking more like a top Associate nation. Trinidad and Tobago is full of experience, both at international and domestic level, but lacks top order batting and significant fast bowling, making them seem like a truly pieced together Associate team. But that is nothing compared to Guyana, whose pace bowling options are essentially non-existent, with their three frontline bowlers being spinners (albeit with the variety of off, leg and left arm orthodox spin).

These teams are at least capable. The question is whether playing for their own nation will spur them on to greater things, playing with more pride and showing more on the field than they have in their careers so far. Furthermore, will this properly spur on the next generation, knowing that they will play for their own countries? If so, then this is something worth doing. Let us hope the cricket boards of these nations are prepared for the inevitable.