Despite hosting the World Cup, West Indies cricket is struggling to fight off a decline. No longer is it the first-choice sport in the Caribbean where football shirts are as common as cricket shirts. In The Independent Angus Fraser tries to work out what has gone wrong.

Nobody with a genuine love for cricket will take any satisfaction from the current plight of the West Indian cricket team. There were aspects of the cricket they played in the mid-Eighties, when an attack containing four frighteningly fast bowlers was at its most brutal and unforgiving, that were unappealing, but cricket needs a strong and competitive West Indian side because no other team on the planet has the ability to thrill and entertain like they do.