Is West Indies cricket dying?

Could the long running stand-off between the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and its players literally kill West Indian cricket? For the first time, there are signs that it could, with the chief executive of the Trinidad & Tobago cricket board threatening that his country could walk out of the Caribbean banner and play as an independent nation.
Bangladesh's series win against a weakened home team was clearly the last straw for many in the Windies who have seen their team plummet from being undisputed kings of the cricketing world two decades ago to staying just above the bottom of the Test heap in recent years.
T&T chief executive Forbes Persaud was perhaps doing no more than giving vent to that frustration, but insisted that many leading figures in the WICB were toying with similar ideas.
T&T are one of the traditional powerhouses of West Indies cricket, along with Barbados, Jamaica and Guyana, and have had a sizeable chunk of the players in any recent full-strength West Indian team.
T & T's Forbes Perrsaud hinted the island constituents were tired of the incessant wrangling between the board and the West Indies Players Assocation (WIPA). With no signs of a let up in the current impasse, Persaud's views might gain ground.
It could, ultimately, spell the tragic demise, after more than a century, of cricket's central role as the sole unifier of the Caribbean islands.
Cricket is the only sport in which the independent islands, all former British colonies, have for long put aside individual differences to compete on the international stage under a single banner - all the Caribbean nations play soccer and compete in the Olympics independently.
"My personal view (is) if the trend continues with the manner in which West Indies cricket is being administered, our board should go on its own and compete as Trinidad and Tobago, just as in football," Persaud told the Trinidad and Tobago Express.
"If something is not done to have cricket administration at the West Indies level properly restructured, I believe we will have no choice but to think about playing as an individual territory on the international scene."
Petty bickering, sadly, might spell the end of a great romance which led to decades of imperious dominance on the cricket field and bred a long line of legendary batsmen and bowlers who helped shape the great game.
Any split is likely to be a long-drawn process, involving the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the likelihood of associate or affiliate memberships for the tiny islands.
Ironically, two decades back, many of the West Indian nations may well have survived a split. Barbados, for instance would have had Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes opening the batting and Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall opening the bowling, enough to make it a formidable international side. Today no West Indian island can realisticaly lay claims to Test status if it were to break away.
A split would certainly destroy West Indies' reputation as a major cricketing nation, but even more importantly it could seriously affect the social fabric of the Caribbean.
The WIPA, the powerful players union which instigated the player boycott and is at the centre of the wrangling over player payments with the WICB, is based in Trinidad. On Sunday, Trinidad's leading cricketer following Brian Lara's retirement, all-rounder Dwayne Bravo, said his local club was better organised than WICB.
Persaud also said though his views were personal, other members shared his view. "There are some board members who believe that we should start thinking about going on our own but, this has not been discussed in any official forum. It's just people expressing their views informally.
"We all know how critical West Indies cricket is as a unifying force, to go that way would be destroying a legacy. It is not going to be easy."
Hopefully, this all-too-real possibility of a split will prod the warring factions into arriving at a compromise.
Pure T&T 61 players from Trinidad & Tobago have played for the West Indies since 1928
Past Greats
Brian Lara
Wes Hall
Sonny Ramadhin
Ian Bishop
Larry Gomes
Gus Logie
Deryck Murray
Learie Constantine
Mervyn Dillon
Active Players (include)
Dwayne Bravo
Darren Bravo
Darren Ganga
Lendl Simmons
Kieron Pollard
Denesh Ramdin
Dave Mohammed
Ravi Rampaul
Besides Trinidad & Tobago, these players from other countries have recently played in full-strength Windies teams:
Jamaica
1.Chris Gayle
2.Jerome Taylor
3.Darren Powell
4.B P Nash
5.David Bernard
6.Xavier Marshall
7.Nikita Miller
Barbados
1.Fidel Edwards
2.Suleiman Benn
3.Dwayne Smith
4.Ryan Hinds
Windward Isles
1.Darren Sammy (St Lucia)
2.Andre Fletcher (Grenada)
3.Devon Smith (Grenada)
Leeward Isles
1.Runako Morton (Nevis)
2.Lionel Baker (Montserrat)
Guyana
1.Shivnarine Chanderpaul
2.Ramnaresh Sarwan
Note: Windward Isles and Leeward Isles are not individual countries