West Indies could be gone by 2025, says former WINDIES Cricket Board director

West Indies captain Jason Holder's team will start their four-test series against Australia as massive underdogs.

A recent West Indies Cricket Board director fears the once great West Indies could disband within 10 years as a result of their continued failure on the international stage.

Baldath Mahabir, who slammed the WICB as "unprofessional, tardy or lax in many instances" after quitting the board last month, is worried things will get so bad the West Indies will split into the 16 individual nations which make up the regional side.

And Mahabir has put heat on the management team run by WICB chief executive Michael Muirhead, saying it had "serious management issues".

Cricket in the Caribbean is in a state of disarray after 20 years of under-achievement. There is now a generation of West Indies cricket followers who have grown accustomed to their side as one of the easybeats of world cricket rather than one of the most feared teams the game has seen.

The Windies are ranked eighth of 10 in tests, a lowly ninth in one-day internationals, which resulted in them missing qualification for the Champions Trophy. However, they are second in the Twenty20 arena.

"We have a passion for West Indies cricket, we have this emotional attachment to the West Indies brand," Mahabir, who served on the Trinidad and Tobago board in the 1980s before becoming a West Indies board member in 2009, said.

"I really don't know where that will go with the younger people, whether they will see West Indies as a force or if they would want to see the individual countries play. That is something that could change dramatically with the younger people coming into the game.

"Anybody who is under 20 years of age would not have the same emotive connect with West Indies cricket that we had because we knew we were beating the world. These people would have no idea of Greendige, Richards, Lloyd and how good they were.

"They would know a team that has taken a battering the last two decades. Let us move 10 years from now - do you think you would want to be associated with a brand like that? And branding is becoming much more important in the world of marketing and sport.

"I would not like to see it happen but there is a possibility."

Cricket, unlike football and athletics, is the only major sport in the Caribbean which plays under the West Indies banner. Disbanding, which Mahabir said was not discussed during his time with the board, would result in the West Indies losing their test status and the separate nations becoming associate members of the International Cricket Council.

The West Indies' board of directors will this weekend meet in St Lucia to discuss a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) report recommending the immediate dissolution of the board. But few in the Caribbean are expecting the board to fall on its sword.

Mahabir believes all boards from the previous 20 years must take responsibility for what has happened, not just the regime led by Dave Cameron, who has come under fire from current and former players and politicians for his handling of the debacle in India where the team abandoned its tour during a one-day series. Mahabir was on a ticket with former great Joel Garner to topple Cameron in the March elections but lost 8-4.

Instead, Mahabir wants the management of the organisation put under the microscope though stopped short of calling for the removal of the chief. "We have serious management issues," Mahabir said. "As a board and directors, we make decisions and go back to our respective territories. We are not full time, we do it on a voluntary basis, you go back to your respective jobs and you leave the running of the operation to management and I think there is a weakness there.

"I wouldn't be prescriptive in saying who should go and who shouldn't go but we must improve the efficiency of the operation."

- Sydney Morning Herald