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THE SECOND AND final Npower Test starts at Durham tomorrow with England having one hand back on the Wisden trophy West Indies have held for only the last ten weeks or so of the last ten years or so. West Indies contrived to lose the first Test spectacularly by ten wickets, following on after a first innings "score" that would have been a miserable one-day cricket total, and in reply to an England first innings total that was allowed to swell to respectable from modest when six catches were put down in one firetrucking session!

And, in this morning’s English Guardian, the man we have to call the West Indies captain, gives not a tell-all but a sell-out interview in which he says he doesn’t care about Test cricket, wouldn’t mourn its loss if it died out, and really wishes he wasn’t West Indies captain so he could be in South Africa pelting his bat at a maximum of 20 overs in the Indian Professional League being played there.

Look for cut-ass before lunch on the first day.

What could any technical staff do to prevent disaster now? I’m afraid the time for mass resignations may swiftly pass into that requiring mass suicide.