West Indies have had to withstand the usual jibes about their dodgy timekeeping in their build-up to the NatWest Series. But it is their indiscipline on the field, rather than indiscipline off it, which will most concern them as they face New Zealand and England in a weekend's double header.
Forty three wides and 42 no-balls in four one-day warm-up matches are about as profligate as it gets and, if their fast bowlers show the same naivety against the Black Caps at Edgbaston today and against England at Trent Bridge tomorrow, the call from their captain Brian Lara to "make an impression early on" will not exactly go according to plan.
Lara, not for the first time, has a vulnerability about him. One moment he is setting a Test record by caning England for 400 not out in Antigua, so avoiding the threat of a Test whitewash; the next he is openly toying with resigning the captaincy in fear that West Indies may not beat Bangladesh. Few great players have seemed so permanently troubled.
Now he leads the most inexperienced West Indies side ever seen in England, a team of considerable but unpredictable talent. These threats to resign cannot be made forever. It is time for the West Indians to grow up almost overnight.
"By not beating Bangladesh in a series in the Caribbean, we would have definitely been going in the wrong direction," Lara said. "I put my job on the line, really and truly, to get the guys as hyped up as possible to win. We needed to win that series. I am not one to quit. I will be playing cricket for some time, but I don't see the captaincy as being something I have to hold on to until the end of my career."
Since an embarrassing defeat in their second one-day warm-up against Ireland, West Indies have begun to flex their muscles. Sussex and Kent have both been beaten easily. Most of the wides against Kent were bouncers. Now that the fast bowlers have expressed themselves physically, a bit of mental acuity would be no bad thing.
"Our performances at Sussex and Kent were very good, especially with the bat," Lara said. "We have some work to do with the ball, and I expect the bowlers to buckle down. With the internationals arriving they must be a lot more focused on getting the balls in the right areas and keeping the foot behind the line. I expect a more professional approach.
"Indiscipline is natural if you put someone on to an international stage at 19 or 20 when they do not have that much experience. My apprenticeship in international cricket was spent off the field watching the great guys playing the practice games on the 1991 tour and learning from them."
It is Lara and the coach Gus Logie's job to instil knowledge and consistency into a young and talented side in the hope of building one capable of challenging for the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean.
But teaching the necessary virtues is all the harder while power struggles reign in Caribbean cricket, however much Lara protests that the squad is oblivious to it.
Sir Vivian Richards is the latest past master to become disillusioned, resigning as chief selector last week, before yesterday's board meeting in Guyana, because he was dissatisfied over an unpaid post that gave him no power over selection on overseas tours.
New Zealand (from): Fleming (capt), Astle, Cairns, Harris, Hopkins (wkt), McCullum (wkt), McMillan, Marshall, Oram, Papps, Styris, Tuffey, Vettori, Butler, Franklin.
West Indies (from): Lara (capt), Baugh (wkt), Best, Bradshaw, Bravo, Chanderpaul, Lawson, Gayle, Jacobs (wkt), Powell, Rampaul, Sammy, Sarwan, DS Smith, DR Smith.