Courtney Walsh put a perceptively different spin on his team's wretched performances in Pakistan

following the second successive thrashing in the Rawalpindi Test last Wednesday.

It's a major cause for concern. not just for the team but for the future of West Indies cricket, the captain warned.

Significantly, the next day, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) was announcing that, for the first time since it began as the Shell Shield back in 1966. no sponsor could be found for the 1998 first-class championship.

No that the sporting people of the Caribbean, and particularly of Walsh's own Jamaica, seemed to notice, or even care much, about the woes of West Indies cricket.

Their frenzied attention was firmly fixed not on Rawalpindi or Bridgetown but on the French city of Marseilles, where the Reggae Boyz' awaited the draw that would decide their ijroup ^opponents for football's

The Juxtaposition was pertinent. No one. least of all sponsors and fans, likes losers.

They like them even less when they play with lack of pride and discipline as even the team manager has to acknowledge has been the case of this team.

And they loathe It when there Is the internal bickering and controversy that has so consumed West Indies cricket of late.

Boys who. in the past, would have identified their sporting role models as the West Indian greats of the past will now be inclined to concentrate their talent and their energy on the

other, more prominent stars of the present.

The Sobers. Halls, Lloyds and Holdings of yesterday are fast being transformed into the Deon Burtons. Dwight Yorkes. Obadele Thompsons and Stephen Ames of today.

Brian Lara s wondrous feats of the recent past certainly made him into an icon even more honoured In his time than any of his cricketing predecessors.

But the euphoria has all but evaporated with his failure to meet the impossible expectations of his host of devotees and with the wrangling that has become his constant, if unwanted, companion.

It Is a burden that concerned Guyanese report is now also encumbering Shivnarine Chan-derpaul. another cricketing model for ourjrouth.

Of course, the sporting examples of the day are not drawn exclusively from our own.

The omnipresent satellite feeds non-stop Images of the expertly hyped American champions and over-priced footballers onto our television screens 24 hours a day.

In telling contrast, we get very little cricket.

In view of the happenings in Pakistan. It may be said that is not such a bad thing but the only cricket match any West Indian station has carried in the six months since the end of our first-class season was the Red Stripe Bowl final.

In India, Srl Lanka, Pakistan and South Africa, they can watch live, not only their own teams but also others and, therefore, all the great players of the day.

It is little wonder that everywhere you go on the subcontinent there is some sort of cricket going on, while the open

pastures and streets of the West Indies, where once the bat and the ball held sway, have converted mainly to football and basketball.

If there was ever any question as to the influence of television on the psyche of our youth it was graphically dispelled during the week by a picture on the front page of the Holiday Nation and a clip of a schools' basketball match on CBC's Evening News.

The first was of a group of strapping young men racing down a hill in St. George on wooden skate boards, a straight copy from the so-called X-Games which are a favourite of ESPN, the American sports network.

The second showed the reaction to a three-pointer by frenzied spectators who sprinted across the court and started to clamber up the chain-link fence. Just as they see them do for a goal in South American football.

It's a safe bet that not many of those youngsters have been up through the early hours getting into a deep depression as Andrew Mason. Fazeer Mohammed and Michael Holding bring sad tidings from Pakistan.

And it's Just as certain that not many of them appreciate how pivotal cricket has been to the social development of our people or recognise the host of humble heroes It has produced.

Indeed. Courtney Walsh was spot on. It certainly isn't the best of times for our cricket to be passing through a crisis. It's the very future of what has been a way of life for us that is on the line here. .