The absurdities are everywhere, conspiring to tax your brain when it needs a break. This week, for instance, I’m watching the TV show Sportsmax with Simon Crosskill and Lance Whittaker interviewing a Caribbean cricket expert with the subject being the perennial problem of the decline of West Indies cricket and our dismal international rating. Asked the inevitable “what to do”, Mr Expert says that “the first priority is that our aspiring cricketers should devote themselves to developing the techniques and skills to play Test cricket.” My brain reeled. Previously, the specialist 
had acknowledged to Lance that all the young players are being inexorably drawn to the huge sums of money and other perks that flow from T20 cricket today, but here he is now proposing as our salvation that they should turn their backs on that and acquire skills to play a form of the game (Test cricket) where the remunerations are very small. One has to ask why should they be seeking to acquire skills from which they will ultimately gain little or nothing? The suggestion is ludicrous. It is an indication of how vexing the problems are in our cricket, that experts can go on television and make these ridiculous arguments and the notion is taken as a point worthy of discussion when it is patently absurd. To give him his due, Whittaker did make the point that Trinidadian player Keiron Pollard had told him, “In T20 cricket I have the opportunity to set myself financially for life.” But here we are calmly proposing that our professional athletes turn their backs on the money in the short form of the game and play instead “for their country” in the Test arena where the remuneration, not to mention the acclaim, is substantially less. It should be obvious to even the less sophisticated mind that this is a laughable proposition, but we have so-called experts, and even former players, making this proposal with a straight face. Why do we continue to hear this being proposed as a solution to our poor cricket standing? It makes no
