Sunday, March 27th 2005 - As my esteemed friend Keith Smith will confirm, I loathe the game of cricket. I've detested it ever since, as a student at Fatima College (Brian Lara's alma mater), some wise disciplinarian introduced a rule that said if you were listed to play cricket for your class team and you didn't turn up, you automatically went into "detention"-an extra hour's punishment after school on afternoons.

So incensed was I by this arbitrary decision that every time my name appeared on the list to play cricket, I simply walked into "detention" for that afternoon, determined to prove that nobody could force me to play a game if I didn't want to.

And, I mean, just think about it for a moment: 11 big men out in the hot sun all day, all intent on getting out a single batsman, and to what end? To say we won! Yeah. Big deal.

Once, and only once, I tried to conquer my detestation for the game by attending a Test match at the Queen's Park Oval. It was the West Indies versus England, with Gary Sobers as captain.

The day I chose to go to the Oval, the West Indies had already run up a serious score and England was playing catch up. For four hours in that baking hot sun, I watched those English batsmen dig their heels in and withstand everything the West Indies had to throw at them.

The end result? England came from behind, as it were, and won the match.

Thereafter, I gave up cricket entirely. It even got to a point where, if I accidentally caught cricket on TV, usually a Test match, my normal reaction would be to watch the players out on that field and mutter: "Why don't you fellars go get yourselves a real job?"

When, of late, there has been so much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the performance of the West Indies cricket team, I've celebrated the possibility that we might consistently do so badly, the masses will lose interest and find something else to distract their miserable lives with.

So, I think I've made my position clear. I loathe the game.

But. And this is an important but. I am a West Indian. Or as Peter Minshall (who will forgive me, I'm sure, for quoting him without permission) said to me last week: "You know how they have 'Europeans'? Well, I'm a Caribbean!"

It's a definition I have no problem at all with.

In fact, I look forward to the day when we unleash the Caribbean Cricket Team on the rest of the world. It'll be a total wipe-out, I'm sure.

In the interim, I have to warn the West Indies Cricket Board that they've opened a Pandora's box by their arrogance and their contempt for the West Indian people, among whom I am to be numbered.

Firstly, who appointed these characters? From whom do they derive the authority, both legal and financial, to tell our cricketers when, where and how to get off?

Who are they to tell a world class batsman like Brian Charles Lara whether he should captain the West Indies team or not? How dare they be so presumptuous as to make decisions about Lara's future cricket career?

And why should the West Indian people, who are the most avid fans of this (to my mind) boring game, subject themselves to this contemptuous treatment?

I understand, trying with great difficulty to follow this controversy, that the Board has asked the individual West Indian players to reveal the details of their contracts with Cable and Wireless.

What about the Board's contracts? How much money are they going to make from linking up with Digicel rather than Cable & Wireless?

I've also seen it reported that the Board has found itself in financial trouble, which is why it's seeking to get a new sponsor for the game. But who is this Board accountable to? What have they done with the money they've earned over the years out of West Indies cricket?

Could the Board please show us a balance sheet going over, say, the past ten years? How much does the Board earn from West Indian sweat, and tears, out there on the greens? What does it expect to earn from any new commercial deal it's now involved in?

How much of that profit goes to the individual players?

These are the real hard questions that need to be asked instead of us worrying over whether the Board will agree to allow Brian Lara to captain his own team. The sheer arrogance and contempt of it!

Last week, sounding out a sound mind like Lloyd Best on this controversy, I suggested to him that we, fellow citizens of Brian Lara, should have only one reaction to this malarkey-if Brian Lara ain't playing, then we go boycott the game in Trinidad and Tobago.

After all, we do have some pride left you know.

Lloyd didn't agree, didn't think that boycotts were a real enough response to anything. In fact he suggested that this whole scenario presented an opportunity for the West Indian people to initiate a move to bring a whole new West Indies Cricket Board into being.

Forget the existing jokers. Let's find a group of regional men and women ("with clean hands", as Lloyd sagely suggested) who have both a love for a popular sport and enough dignity not to insult their own fellow West Indians with this mercenary and wholly irresponsible attitude.

I agree with Lloyd. This is no setback. This is an opportunity for us to deal a death blow to these old colonials with their autocratic ideas about "control".

I ask again, who appointed the West Indies Cricket Board? From whence do they derive their authority? And if that's the attitude they're going to adopt, contempt for us, then let's fire them.

And albeit given Lloyd Best's feelings about boycotts, my final word on the subject is if Brian Lara isn't captain of the West Indies by the time the visitors get to Trinidad, then there'll be no audience. We ain't playing either!