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The call for healing in West Indies cricket is nothing new. In fact, it's the type of language that is used in any situation where there has been some kind of upheaval and where relations are thought to have been fractured.

The time for mending fences and recreating a sense of brotherhood and calm is inevitable if there's to be any further progress.

To be quite frank, it's what happens after the healing takes place that concerns me most, because if we by chance fall back into the same old habits then we are bound to have the same problems that will eventually lead to more conflict and more healing.

In other words, we have to be careful that we don't recycle old mannerisms and posturing, and I think this may have been the crux of the matter in relation to the running of the board in the past five years.

There might have been an eagerness to do business in a new way, but once those who were entrusted with power became entrenched in their positions they took as a given that they could dictate the proceedings without feeling accountable to anyone.

In other words in a very subtle way they retained control over things even though the word was dropped from their name some years ago. So in a sense the more things changed the more they remained the same.

Therefore the traffic jam that occurred was only waiting to happen and it did. I want to say that whoever are elected to lead West Indies cricket must be ever mindful that they are running the game on the behalf of the people and not for one minute use the platform for self aggrandisement and ego trips.

The elected must be grounded in humility and a total commitment to work for the development of West Indies cricket. It would help too if they have a sound balance of the administrative and cricketing side.

There is no doubt that money rolled in during the Pat Rousseau years, but the cricket slipped to an all-time low. We must revisit the cricketing side with greater purpose because this is the real product that will help the dollars to increase as there will be a greater demand to see the West Indies perform.

This said a lot about the new low our cricket had fallen to. The next West Indies Cricket Board president must see it as his first mission to rebuild the face of West Indies cricket.

Any new president must be able to reduce the level of insularity within the region starting at board level because once it has its genesis there, it tends to fester and affect the health of the entire cricket body.

Preventative medicine is required instead of looking for the cure that might come too late to heal a malignant disease. If we learn from the past, forbidding history to repeat itself, consolidation and not healing would be the order of the day.

© The Barbados Nation