Humiliating will be the right word to describe the Windies Test defeat against England. The first one was a 10 wickets defeat and a chance of leveling the series was crashed with their second defeat at the Riverside and that is by an innings and 83 runs. And in West Indies captain Chris Gayle’s opinion it is the volume of international cricket, the West Indies team is being forced to play is affecting the team performance and is generally responsible for the debacle against England. And to some extent his observations are correct.

No sooner than the English tour of West Indies came to an end, the West Indies cricketers received the Board’s summon that they get prepared to tour England for a Test and ODI series. This return tour was not in the West Indies’ original schedule - they were just asked to fit in the place of the Sri Lanka team that pulled out of their scheduled England tour because of their players’ IPL commitments.

Barely a month passed since England’s Test and one-day tour of the Caribbean ended. After the two test series, a three-match ODI series kicks off at Headingley on Thursday. And that finds the West Indies team in real mess with almost no time to rest before the upcoming cricket series.

After playing this back to back series against England, they will again need to pull up the socks for the upcoming twenty-20 WC that starts from June 5.  And that is only the beginning of the story with the team again flying back home to play four ODIs against India followed by a series in the Caribbean against Bangladesh.

No stoppage there; no sooner they finish with their tryst with Bangladesh team, than it will be time for flying to Australia. From there they will have to fly straight to South Africa for the Champions Trophy.

Pretty mind boggling indeed. No wonder the Windies skipper has got lot to complain. “It has been a lot of cricket. It boils down to the mental side of things, not the physical - and it has been non-stop for us, and is jam-packed for the rest of the year as well. You have to look after yourself, and the mental part is key. There's no two ways about it. At some stage you will find you lapse a bit, and you have to be aware of that.”

However, the West Indies skipper admitted that fixture congestion was not the only reason for this humiliating defeat against England, that itself suffered a 1-0 defeat in the five-match series in the Caribbean, just a month back.

“We're here to do our job - and we didn't go about it properly. They (England) played good cricket and used the conditions well; we didn't make that necessary adjustment,” observed Gayle, who made it clear that he enjoys his role as West Indies captain despite his indifference towards Test cricket.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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