By Tony Cozier
in LONDON
Not for the first time in the recent past, the British media has lambasted a West Indies team for an abject performance.

Seldom has the criticism been as sharp or as justified as in the recent series.

Writers in the national press and television and radio commentators have repeatedly questioned, not so much the West Indies’ ability but their indifference and lack of professionalism.

“To watch West Indies this tour has been to watch a team who have given the impression of going through the motions,” former England captain Mike Atherton wrote yesterday in The Times of which he is now chief cricket writer.

He noted that the team was paid about US$1.5 million for the tour by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), a seven-fold increase on their normal fee, plus the usual US$14,000 per scheduled playing day by sponsors  Digicel.

It was, he said, “Not an insignificant amount and one – surely – that demands something in return.”

Brian Moore, in his weekly column in the Daily Telegraph, also took up the issue of professionalism.

“The acceptance of a contract to tour by a professional sportsman and the usually innate competitiveness of that sportsman are normally sufficient to guarantee a minimum standard of performance. Not so if you are a West Indies cricketer,” Moore wrote.

“The attitude of the West Indies squad during the (thankfully) finished tour of England in the past weeks mirrored that of a seven-year-old boy who had been told to go and tidy his bedroom,” he added.

Acknowledging that the tour, a late replacement for the originally scheduled Zimbabwe, was ill-timed, Moore maintained that “once you take the money you have to at least try.”

“Except for individual cameos, this is precisely what the West Indies did not do whilst on the pitch,” he added.

The West Indies did not win a single match, losing both Tests, the two completed ODIs and also to the England Lions, formerly the ‘A’ team.

Leading into the final match of the tour, the third ODI at Birmingham on Tuesday, Stephen Brenkley wrote in The Independent that “it would probably require them not to turn up” for England to lose.

“So mediocre have the West Indies been in approach and execution, so lacking in either gumption or spirit, so cavalier in their obligations to a magnificent past that it is difficult to see how they might draw level in the NatWest Series,” he added.

They duly lost by 58 runs, conceding a total of 328 for seven, the highest ever by England in 83 such matches between the teams.

As captain, Chris Gayle has taken most of the flak.

Steve James, the former Glamorgan captain who is now a columnist on the Daily Telegraph, called for Gayle to be sacked for what he termed his “negative, spectacularly ill-considered comments” about Test cricket.

“Gayle is hardly one of the game’s great thinkers but he is a Test captain of a major nation. And with that comes a certain responsibility,” he wrote. “He has abdicated that quite astonishingly.”

Even though he noted that Gayle had a “decent record in charge” with only three defeats in 13 completed Tests prior to the England tour, he said that could be put down to the brilliance of Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan.

“It is certainly not down to Gayle’s on-field enthusiasm,” James charged. “England players report incredulity at his inactivity there. Never a word of encouragement, hands in pockets, feet rooted to the ground at first slip. Bowling changes occur with all the consideration of a blackjack dealer.”

Atherton felt some sympathy for Gayle in the way the tour was foisted on him and others but said that it where it should stop.

“Captaincy, in no small measure, is about sacrificing yourself for something bigger and leading by example,” he stated. “How much has Gayle given of himself this tour?”

Atherton alluded to the problems between the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) but said the issue “starts with the captain and the players”.

“Nobody should expect the present lot to measure up to the great players of the past in terms of performance because that level of ability simply does not exist in the West Indies’ dressing room,” he stated.

“Everybody, though, should expect basic standards of professionalism,” he added.