“Pride is the basis of all true courage. There never was a hero without pride, never a coward who could boast of having it.” - Anonymous

I am forced to ask if those, who wear the shield on their chests have it in their hearts. Do they know, do they even care to know, what the honour of that shield on their chest means to us? Do they even recognize it as an honour? Or is it just to them another job in life’s engagements which can be easily substituted with another? Do they appreciate that they are not merely players but warriors? Warriors, who ought to not just have pride for West Indies cricket but be consumed by it?

Do they have any appreciation for what the Prime Minister of Jamaica recently declared with eloquence and pomp? That “to the people of the Caribbean cricket is not simply a pastime or a recreational activity, it is a way of life, it is a potent force for uniting our people and is unquestionably the most visible and successful manifestation of Caribbean integration.”

When our team left these shores, having won convincingly against Sri Lanka and having to face an injured and fractured Zimbabwean team without a number of their finer batsmen and having only recently suffered a hiding in Australia, we as the worshippers of regional cricket, had every right to think that this tour would be a mere preparatory precursor to the more demanding South African endeavour.

Brian Lara and his men are letting us down badly. They are making a habit of it and the habit is getting nastier and nastier by the series. The sloppy, desire-less approach to batting is an insult to all fans who deprive ourselves of sleep and sanity as we itchingly trudge out of bed at ungodly hours in the morning to fasten our eyes and hearts to the television screens. We do this without question, without encouragement, it is in our blood, we know no other way. Do they know no other way? Or are their options vast and bountiful? Do they feel they would be better off with a South African or English county contract? From their performance one has to wonder.

Of course Ridley Jacobs, that old indefatigable warrior and the energising freshman Fidel Edwards, can be possible exceptions in this first Test. But when one considers the situations in which they were forced to salvage West Indian pride, one can easily turn one’s back in abhorrence, head bowed in rank shame. We as fans are not getting what we deserve.

Lara and the West Indian players are robbing us. They are bruising our confidence and dismantling our trust. Yet we will not turn our backs on them because that is not an option. West Indies cricket is not a switch in our minds that we can flick one way or the other depending on our mood or the fortunes of the team, it is an invisible internal organ that functions without fail to dictate the very state of our being. It is difficult to have a good day at work, school, the rum shop or wherever else, when one of the worst teams in the world was only marginally, by the width of an atom, deprived of what would have been a victory of considerable tragedy for us.

Lara has been on an unrelenting campaign seeking our patience and support. He need not ask for support, that comes without question but he cannot come to us with any excuses now and implore us to be patient. There is no excuse for flirting so firmly and so nonchalantly with defeat against Zimbabwe. We have no patience to extend to this nonsense!

As fans we demand that the players go borrow, beg or steal some pride. Lara I ask you this - do your men have no pride, no honour, no respect for the immeasurable value of West Indies cricket to its peoples? Perhaps because of your privileged positions you have never had to slave at your daily duties after consecutive nights of negligible sleep. You do not know of the humiliation and indignity which is meted out to those of us by unforgiving employers who have no mercy for our tired bodies as we under-perform at our duties as a result of following you and your men’s fortunes when we ought to be resting and refueling. Perhaps you know not of the hurt, like the repeated sledge-hammering of our hearts against a metal floor. It pains us, and pains us badly. We understand you, but do you understand us?

Isadora Duncan wrote with the wisdom of a divinely guided mind that, “what one has not experienced, one will never understand in print.”

Has the time come to make you and your men the fans? To give your jobs to less deserving, under-performing, pride-less men and then force you to watch and internalize, so that you may experience how we - the fans - feel. Perhaps that will recapture your men’s lost pride and give them the courage to fight.