Why West Indies failing to qualify for World Cup 2023 is heart wrenching as a neutral?

West Indies have just officially gone out of the World Cup 2023 reckoning. The two-time World Champions suffered another defeat, this time at the hands of Scotland and now their fate is sealed.

The downfall of West Indies is a long-running story, but this has to be the nadir of that. A serial winner back in the 1970s and beyond, the team of Gordon Greenidge, Viv Richards, Curtly Ambrose, Brian Lara and many many more stalwarts of the game – it is quite startling to fathom how far they have degraded.

It has been a dismal outing for them in the past few ODI World Cups. Since their defeat against India in the 1983 World Cup, the Caribbean side could only make it to one semifinal after that, which came in 1996.

In the world cricket, if there’s a team which have no haters, they are the West Indies, at least in the modern era. The Calypso beaters are loved around the world, especially for their T20 commitments across the globe with various franchises.

And even as a neutral, it will come as a cultural shock to many to not see the familiar brownish jersey when the World Cup starts in around three months’ time in India.

For the Caribbeans, it was coming. Their playing in the Qualifiers was itself a downgrade, but then their dismal outings and terrible inconsistency have cost them the biggest prize.

What happened to West Indies in Qualifiers 2023

West Indies won their first two Qualifiers matches against USA and Nepal, but even those wins had alarms. The USA managed to score 258 runs while chasing 298, whereas Nepal also managed 238 runs against them.

Then the first reality check came against Zimbabwe, when Shai Hope and co. lost the match by 35 runs. A bigger shock came against the Netherlands, as the West Indies failed to defend 375 runs. The match against the Dutch ended in a tie and in the super over, Logan van Beek created history by scoring 30 runs off Jason Holder’s over.

Jason Holder couldn’t believe what just happened. pic.twitter.com/vEvuhPywYm

— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) June 26, 2023

The Calypso stars qualified for the super sixes but needed three wins and results going in their way to qualify for the World Cup. But they have failed in the first hurdle against Scotland.

The Scots bundled the Caribbeans for a mere 181 runs, and then chased it down with 7 wickets in hand, and just less than seven overs to spare.

West Indies failing to qualify for World Cup 2023 is heartwrenching

But even for a neutral, this is a heartwrenching story. Cricket is synonymous with West Indies. The greatest folklores of the game are associated with certain personnel who have donned the shores of Trinidad, Jamaica and other Caribbean nations.

It has become more disjointed in recent times, but the term West Indies exerts certain emotions in the elderly, who still reminisce the old duels of Marshall-Gavaskar, Bishop- Kapil Dev, or like Ambrose-Tendulkar.

Slowly but steadily, we have witnessed how the cohesion has diluted in the West Indies setup, where players have been more keen to play T20 for franchise teams, rather than don West Indies jerseys. But this has to be the lowest point of their nosedive.

A team with such rich history and flair not managing to qualify for World Cup is nothing but disappointing and angering at the same time. The West Indies board have a huge part in this downfall.

And this is the saddest part. A team which may ave enormous potential have lost their way completely courtesy of incompetency at the top and lack of passion in the new generation, which has inclined toward T20 franchise cricket more than representing their country.

Over the years, mismanagement, and issues with players have ravaged Caribbean cricket and players have increasingly made themselves distant from the national team. We have seen top players like Andre Russell, Sunil Narine and others have simply denied playing for them, which in turn has cost the Windies more than those players.

Surely this has to be their deepest dip, we can only hope for a glimpse of brighter realms from here. It is high time the players, and the board take a hard look in the mirror and take the onus to come out of this mud.

West Indies cricket has a plethora of emotions associated with it, which not just transcends the island nations, but the entire globe. Hence it requires an immediate diagnosis and prompt treatment, otherwise, the deep dive may run out of oxygen while attempting a surge for survival.