Rocky road ahead for Windies...

BANGLADESH have already arrived in England, the first of the countries visiting these shores for the Champions Trophy. The West Indies, of course, will not be among them.

And it is very plausible that, when the cricketing world descends on England for the World Cup in two years’ time, the West Indies will again be absent. Only the top eight teams on the ICC ODI rankings qualify automatically.

Bad news for the West Indies: they lie in ninth, nine points off Pakistan in eighth. More bad news for the West Indies: the cutoff for automatic qualification is the end of September. Before then the West Indies play a three-game home series with Afghanistan and a one-off ODI in Ireland; they are ranked above both and will not gain many ranking points if they win (and don’t be surprised if they’re flummoxed by Rashid Khan and lose an ODI or two to Afghanistan). Then they only have the five-match series with England in September: it is conceivable that the West Indies will need to win 4-1 to sneak into the last automatic qualification spot, which doesn’t seem remotely plausible to anyone who saw them meekly beaten 3-0 at home to England in March.

And now the third bit of bad news for the men from the Caribbean: the qualifiers for the tournament are likely to be moved from Bangladesh to Ireland and Scotland, which will increase the hosts’ prospects of qualification; Afghanistan, familiar with playing in European conditions, probably won’t mind too much either.

The West Indies would still expect to clinch one of the two spots in the qualifiers. But the tournament is ruthless – ten teams competing for just two spots. The Associate nations are improving, and will all target the Windies, who could once again be their own worst enemy: they are in this mess largely because of the terrible relationship between the board and players, meaning their Word Twenty20 winning players are rarely spotted in ODI cricket.

Johnny Grave, the West Indies’ new chief executive, has made an encouraging start to life in the job, and recognises the need to rebuild relations with the Caribbean stars. If he doesn’t succeed, the price could be severe indeed: not just a Champions Trophy without the West Indies, but a World Cup without them, too.