LONDON, England (Reuters) - It was Mark Twain who suggested that reports of his death were as exaggerated as they were premature.
Anyone writing an obituary of West Indies cricket this week, however, following their second Test defeat against England, would probably be asked: ``What took you so long?''
The team may retain an aura for cricket's more grey-haired aficionados, but it is little more than a trick played by ageing minds.
Compared to what went before, the West Indian game has been without a meaningful pulse for a decade, the occasional blip on the intensive-care screen provided by the likes of Ambrose, Walsh and Lara.
The first death notices appeared in 1995, when West Indies were broken as the world's cricketing superpower, losing at home for the first time in 22 years to the emerging Australians.
They have been updated at regular intervals since, each new version accompanied by lurid tales of player dissension and rebellion.
The best of these tales, perhaps, came when former fast bowling great Michael Holding refused to commentate on a match after Carl Hooper was brought back as captain.
Consider the stark statistics.
FALL GUYS
If Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, the fall guys of Test cricket, are removed from the equation, West Indies have not won an away series for nine years.
Since England last visited the Caribbean in 1997-98, West Indies have lost more than twice as many games as they have won.
They have been whitewashed by South Africa (5-0), New Zealand (2-0), Australia (5-0), Sri Lanka (3-0, despite Lara averaging more than 100 in the series) and Pakistan (2-0).
In the last seven years, they have lost 40 games, compared with a total of 120 defeats in 76 years of Test history.
Lara's side could yet bounce back, of course, to level their series against England at 2-2. The captain did just that almost single-handedly in 1998-99, thwarting Australia with scores of 213, 153 not out and 100 in the final three matches.
But this is not a good West Indies side, let alone a colourful one. The bowling, in the greatest betrayal of the past, is toothless or at least milk-teethed, Fidel Edwards's injury and Jermaine Lawson's problems with his action not helping.
It is not for nothing that West Indies are eighth in the Test championship -- ahead only of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh -- as well as eighth in the one-day table -- ahead of Zimbabwe, Kenya and Bangladesh.
'PLAYSTATION TEAM'
There have been some choice criticisms of Lara's side during the current series.
West Indies cricket columnist BC Pires, writing in London's Guardian newspaper, attacked the players for their lack of application and knowledge, branding them ``a PlayStation-generation team''.
``This team cannot bat through 90 overs because they can barely sit through a feature film ... the young players probably think the Three Ws was a restaurant.''
The real story, however, in the Caribbean is not about West Indies' failings. That is old fare. The real news concerns the birth of England's Steve Harmison as a strike bowler of real quality.
Just over a year ago, he was busy bowling eight wides in an over in Australia. Now he has three man-of-the-match awards in a row and 25 wickets in those games at an average of 10.12.
With Simon Jones, whose father Jeff was in the last victorious England squad in the Caribbean in 1967-68, re-emerging after a 16-month injury nightmare and seamer Matthew Hoggard rediscovering his accuracy, England suddenly have an attack of vitriolic substance.