Is West Indian cricket on the way out of a mire of complacency and scandalous mismanagement into which it descended during the 90s? Throughout that decade the residue of a great side was dissipating and the Caribbean was being engulfed by football and the spreading tentacles of satellite television from the United States, with its black heroes slam-dunking rather than rattling out chin music. A generation was lost.
Watching West Indies play India in a couple of down-to-the-wire one-day internationals over the past week, however, makes me wonder if we are not witnessing the genesis of the next age of Caribbean cricket, albeit in a form that in keeping with the region's proximity to the US, acknowledges the more instant gratification offered by limited overs. The successful staging of the World Cup next year (still nip and tuck: the new Warner Park ground in St Kitts, used for the first time on Tuesday, looks delightful while the previous two ODIs were played at Sabina Park in what looked like a builder's yard) and a decent run in it may provide the catalyst needed for the game there to rediscover its soul.
The West Indies coach, Bennett King, rightly will be taking some credit for an upsurge in performance. King is one of five Australians coaching Test sides at present. If overseas coaches are the thing these days, then it came hardest for Caribbean cricket to accept that a dispassionate person might best be suited to help untangle the knot that was threatening to strangle the life out of the game there.
Greg Chappell, answerable he feels to a billion people in India, Tom Moody in charge of the passionate Sri Lankans, and Dav Whatmore trying to drag a young Bangladesh side ever upwards are all Aussies in charge of foreign sides and each may feel, with some justification, that he has the toughest coaching job in cricket. Even John Buchanan, who has a job simply keeping up baggy-green appearances may stake a claim, for it would be hard to be the man who helps mastermind a decline.
But my bet is that it is King who has the shortest straw. The West Indies is a unique concept, the only corporate sporting representation of what is a region rather than a single country. Successful West Indies captains have always required special diplomatic qualities over and above their cricket skills to unite in the common cause, players from different national, ethnic and occasionally religious backgrounds: Frank Worrell, the first black captain; Clive Lloyd who built the war machine; the autocratic Viv Richards; and the gentleman Richie Richardson.
Watching the manner in which West Indies triumphed in two nail-biting finishes - Yuvraj Singh unable to see the first job through, foxed at the last moment by some inspiration from Dwayne Bravo; Ramnaresh Sarwan calmly succeeding in the second match where Yuvraj had failed - shows that King is making headway. There would have been a time in the recent past where neither game would have seen a West Indian win. In Chris Gayle, Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Bravo, Dwayne Smith, and Fidel Edwards there is enough talent to keep any coach ticking. And then there is Brian Lara. The finest attacking batsman of his generation is back in his third official term as captain and there are those who will see the upturn in fortune as a by-product.
They might do well to look behind the appointment and see what lies there, however. To an outsider anyway, it smacks of keeping him sweet, something to maintain his interest. But turn the clock back and it is to realise that his first appointment, in 1998, saw his ambition push aside the faithful Courtney Walsh to the detriment of team spirit, and his second saw him reduce the then coach Gus Logie to a subservient role.
Some of which will look familiar to King's counterpart in this series. Chappell, thus far anyway, has won his battle with Sourav Ganguly - the former captain who before Chappell faced him down ran things as his personal fiefdom - and has been allowed to move the side on in his manner. King would do well to pick Chappell's brains for in Lara, he might come to recognise his own Ganguly.