NOTHING CHANGES, it seems, as far as the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) is concerned. And it doesn't matter which set of administrators are running the shift, every now, more than then, there is some negative that intrinsically impacts on the performance of the regional team, and it generally precedes a tour.

The latest involves head coach John Dyson spewing frustration over the lack of a training camp ahead of the West Indies tour of Adu Dhabi for three one-day internationals against Pakistan which begins with the first this morning (6 a.m. Jamaica time). The second and third will be played on Friday and Sunday.

"We have not prepared well at all for the upcoming tour of Abu Dhabi. We wanted a camp to be held but that was not possible and hence we go to Abu Dhabi and have two days there before we take on Pakistan in the first limited overs match," Dyson said.

Dyson's utterances may appear a bit odd, but they underline his level of frustration with the regional cricket bosses.

No training camp

Captain Chris Gayle, vice captain Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, fast bowlers Jerome Taylor and Daren Powell, medium-pacer Darren Sammy and spinner Dave Mohammed were members of the Stanford Superstars team.

With the stakes being high, those players were involved in a six-week training camp ahead of that eight-day series, during which the regional team played three Twenty20 matches. Ultimately, it won the richest prize for any sporting match, US$20 million, by beating England by 10 wickets.

In the meantime, the other members of the squad were preparing with their respective teams for the regional one-day championships. Much of that preparation took the form of practice matches, which had been going on for about a month or so.

The WICB also sanctioned the Stanford Super Series, in which it encountered contractual problems with its own sponsor Digicel. So, it is only natural it would not have set up a training camp as about half the members of its team were included on the Superstars side.

However, players preparing with their respective territories, with a different set of players, a different coach, different management team and most likely, a different set of circumstances, cannot be the same as any preparation they would have had in a Windies camp as a Windies unit.

Dyson requests at least a two-week camp ahead of each series, which seems only fair. A big part of the problem at this stage, however, had to do with the timing of this series that was specially worked out for Abu Dhabi because of the threat in violence-torn Pakistan, where there has been a spate of bomb attacks, even during Test series.

That country has not played a Test series in basically a year for that reason as its opponents, one behind the other and including the West Indies, have pulled out citing safety concerns.

The fact that they have not played competitive cricket for some time would have been expected to have negated their chances. However, as the Windies never prepared as a team, whatever advantages existed may have gone out the window.

Matter of priorities

If the team's rankings mean anything to the WICB, as it does for the region's people, then this series also presented an opportunity to improve it.

Clearly though, it's a matter of priorities and those of the coach and others in the region at large don't match those of the board, which somehow, contrived or not, make decisions that have generally impacted on the team's performance in a negative way, regardless of which set of administrators have been running the shift for well over a decade and a half.