Tym Glaser, Assistant Editor, Sport

DON'T SAY I didn't warn ya.

Before this Test tour of England began, I wrote the Windies had no chance to win the series, would probably hit rock bottom and be swept by England - weather permitting.

Well, there will be no sweep thanks to a sodden first Test at Lord's, but not even miserable Leeds' weather and continued radar-less bowling from home pacemen Liam Plunkett and Steve Harmison could save the tourists from their worst ever Test defeat at Headingley - an innings and 283 runs.

It was not the worst loss of all time. That dubious distinction belongs to Australia who were pummelled by England at the Oval in 1938 by a healthy innings and 579 runs.

Some guy called Len Hutton batted a couple of days for a record score of 364 and then his skipper, Wally Hammond, bravely declared at 903 for seven after his side had occupied the crease for 335 overs. England then bowled the Aussies out twice in fewer than 90 overs.

Now, that's what I call a beating it should be noted only nine Australians batted because a little fellow called Don Bradman and another called Jack Fingleton were injured.

It wasn't all gloom and doom for the men in the baggy green caps though, because they did still draw that pre-war series.

Bleak future

The same cannot be said for the Windies whose near and distant futures look as bleak as those English skies of May.

Yes, an ill-timed dive by skipper Ramnaresh Sarwan reduced the Windies to 10 batsmen at Headingley and prematurely ended his first sojourn at the helm of the side.

And losing the most seasoned bat, Shiv Chanderpaul, just before the start of the second Test, was a real morale deflater, but they would not have made an innings and 283 runs worth of difference.

The simple, inalienable fact is that this post-Lara side is probably only marginally better than Bangladesh, and that sub-continental side is younger and appears to have greater scope for improvement.

You can't really blame the players. They are merely the end products of a decrepit system.

If you want to point fingers, aim them at the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) which has done next to nothing to put a semblance of professional cricket structure in place and just magically expects the likes of Lloyd, Richards, Holding, Greenidge, Haynes, Marshall, Ambrose, Walsh et al, to pop up out of the cane fields or topple out of palm trees and catapult the region back to the top of the world. Sorry, guys, but one freakish convergence oftalent per century is about the quota.

High price to pay

If you want to continue playing the blame game, shoot for the Caribbean governments as well. In the mid-'80s, when the Windies were unbeatable, the then WICB president, Allan Rae, proposed that regional governments set up a fund for the players. That would have been a neat step into professionalism. It appears only one government, Michael Manley's PNP, was willing to come to the party and that brilliantly simple plan was nipped in the bud. Now, 20-odd years later, cricket in the region is paying the price and it's only going to get steeper.

I don't like government interventions in sport but something has got to be done to infuse cash at the grassroots' level of the game - where its future lies, and also look after the top of the tree, as fragile as that may be.

A regional lottery sounds like a grand idea, but would it be fair for those proceeds to go to cricket and not other sports or, more importantly, things like hospitals, fire stations, roads or a Caribbean disaster-relief fund?

The price is high any way you want to look at it but, the simple question that should be asked of the WICB and the governments of the English-speaking islands is, do you want to save the one true flagship of Caribbean unity or do you want to see it sink?

Ten years after that 1938 thumping, Australia again toured England and took all before them. That Bradman-led side was one of the all-time greats and became immortalised as 'The Invincibles'.

Ten years from now, what will West Indian teams be known as? If we continue down this path, it will be 'The Invisibles'.

Feedback: tym.glaser@gleanerjm.com.