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Every time we start to wonder just how West Indies cricket has got itself into its present unholy mess, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) summons a Press conference and beams it live and direct across the Caribbean to leave us in no doubt about the source.

The latest, in Antigua last Monday night, was up to its usual standard of mind-boggling absurdity.

For half-an-hour or so, WICB president Pat Rousseau castigated captain, manager and coach for ``weaknesses in leadership that contributed to the poor performance of the team'' on the tour of South Africa and gave a host of reasons why captain Brian Lara should be removed from the post.

He then promptly announced that, in spite of everything he had just said, Lara would be retained, if conditionally, and so would manager Clive Lloyd and coach Malcolm Marshall.

Lara would be on probation for two Tests, during which he would have to meet ``specific performance targets'', identified as ``an improvement in his relationship with his players, discipline with specific emphasis on punctuality, interaction with the coach and manager and nurturing and development of his team members''.

As Prime Minister Owen Arthur has noted, these are things that the captain of any school team would take for granted - and Lara has been leading teams at all levels since he was at Fatima College and been fined by at least two precisely for turning up late.

Now, even as the captain of the West Indies, he was being treated like an errant schoolboy, scolded in public and told to mend his ways.

Demeaning

It was demeaning stuff and, whatever his many faults, Lara did not deserve to be so humiliated, especially since he was still the captain. And, even if their censure was more muted, neither did Lloyd and Marshall, two esteemed West Indian cricketers. What respect can they now command in the West Indies' dressing room after the Board they represent has openly chided them for ``weaknesses in leadership''?

The whole thing smacked of one of those trials by public ridicule so popular with Mao's Red Guards during China's Cultural Revolution.

If the sounds of uncontrollable laughter could be heard from a couple of miles away, drifting in above the whirr of the cameras and recorders and the president's nasal tones, it would have been the Australians heartily gaffawing in their accommodation at the Rex Halcyon Hotel.

The spectacle of an opponent shooting himself in the foot is always satisfying and amusing.

In the circumstances, Lara - and Lloyd and Marshall, too - should have immediately informed Rousseau that their positions had been made untenable and resigned.

It was abundantly clear at the end of the Press conference that the Board had no confidence in them although, true to form, it lacked the conviction to replace them.

Resignations, however, have gone out of fashion in the Caribbean.

If it was still the honourable response to loss of face there would not be a single member remaining on the WICB following their capitulation to the players' ultimatum at Heathrow Airport last November.

That, as you may remember, was preceded by another grand media conference in Antigua at which Rousseau announced the dismissal of Lara as captain and Carl Hooper as vice-captain. Within a week, he was agreeing to their reinstatement and proclaiming that the climb down was no reason for him, and his discredited Board, to quit.

The options, then as now, were clear-cut. The outcome both times has been a compromise, a fudge, that did no credit to those in charge of West Indies cricket. Either Lara was still the man for the job or he was not.

The argument that there was no one else is simply a red-herring. There simply has to be an alternative should Lara fail to meet his ``targets'' after two Tests or if he suddenly catches chicken-pox or, indeed, if the chipped bone in his right wrist hasn't healed come Friday morning.

Once the Board decided Lara was their choice, he should have been retained for all four Tests without all the embarrassing linen-washing and, indeed, with the Board's full support.

If the latter, as the overwhelming evidence indicated was the case, he should have been sacked. Full stop.

It was ludicrous to hear Rousseau pleading at the end of his dissertation for the public to give its ``full support'' to the captain and management after he had just finished itemising the charges against them and finding them guilty of being mostly responsible for the debacle in South Africa that so shamed West Indies cricket.

Conflict of interest

After South Africa, and right away running into Australia, it was always going to be tough on Lara. It will now be doubly so. His retention, even in Trinidad, has not been universally well accepted. The Board has openly confirmed his deriliction of duty in South Africa, a serious indictment that has angered most West Indians.

They would have long since set their own ``performance targets'' and, with Hooper and Shivnarine Chanderpaul missing for the first Test, there will be even greater pressure on Lara to make significant scores.

Beyond the boundary, West Indian crowds can be unforgiving. On the field, the Australian sledging will carry an even more acid bite for there was already no love lost between them and Lara.

Such strain can have contrasting effects. It can overwhelm the mentally weak but can strengthen the resolve of the mentally tough.

There are who speak fearfully of Australia's ``psychological warfare'' in the form of Dennis Lillee's war-cry that ``now the West Indies are on their knees they should be hammered - just as they used to hammer us''. It is an underestimation of the resilience of West Indian.

If they have forgotten the reaction to Tony Greig's similar braggadocio in 1976 that he would make the West Indies ``grovel'', Clive Lloyd can remind them.

No doubt he will also make it a point of reminding those who assemble in Port-of-Spain on Wednesday - that is, after he has tried to impress on them that, yes, he, Lara and Marshall are still in charge in spite of what they heard out of Antigua on Monday night.