IT HAS often been said that public memory is woefully short and that politicians and their ilk have thrived because of this. It would appear that the memory of those who hold office, public or otherwise, is equally short.
Nothing else can account for the fact that the West Indies have been awarded the 2007 World Cup. It was just a few months back that a Test match had to be called off after 17 overs because of the condition of the pitch in Jamaica. And remember, this was because the match referee deemed that players faced physical danger by continuing with the match.
To date, there has been no public mention of the results of an inquiry into how such a pitch was prepared (or is it unprepared?) for a Test match. Nobody has had to answer, no-one has been held responsible. And the ICC promptly goes ahead and awards the World Cup to the West Indies. That's foresight for you. Let's not forget the other aspect either -- some of the matches may be played in Bermuda, the US and Canada.
Few, if any, of the West Indies Test venues are up to scratch when it comes to hosting a tournament of this magnitude. Most of the seating is ad hoc and the facilities have more flaws than good points. Sponsors are difficult to find in the Caribbean and most recently the national team itself has had difficulty in finding funds for itself.
Of course, the tournament is nine years away. That will be thrown in my face, I'm sure. But down the years, financially things have been getting worse for West Indies cricket rather than better. This is reflected by the exodus of players to basketball, something which has deprived the West Indies of back-up players to replace the stars who made up the world beating squads of the 1980s.
Add to this the logistics of playing a tournament over the entire Caribbean, Bermuda, the US and Canada. Here is a nightmare all ready to unfold. It is easy to trace the source of this idea, which, would definitely have been advanced under the myth of "spreading and popularising the game". Organisational skills of a very high order would be called for to run such a tournament. Why, we might as well play it in India, Australia and England with a couple of matches in Canada!
The concept of having the tournament hosted by different Test playing countries each time is good, never mind that this only came about because England could not find a sponsor after the third World Cup. But there has to be some logic involved; it does not have to be passed around just for the sake of being passed around. The catchword these days is globalisation. But one must realise that the same dictionary which contains this word, also plays host to the word "ridiculous" and "ludicrous". And ideas such as this only merit such adjectives.