THE tendency of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to err and bungle is well established.

So we can hardly do more than throw our hands in the air in exasperation at news of the latest embarrassing foul-up.

A CMC story out of Trinidad and Tobago tells us that the national teams of Barbados, Jamaica and the Windward Islands were forced to sleep in the corridors of a hotel on Tuesday. This was after they arrived in Port-of-Spain at 2:00 am that day — at the peak of the famous Carnival celebrations — ahead of yesterday’s start of the sixth round of the regional first-class competition.

The players had arrived from Guyana where the fifth round of the competition was played. They found on their arrival at their hotel in Port-of-Spain that they would have to wait until 2:00 pm that afternoon to be checked into rooms, hence their reported sojourn in the hotel corridors for several hours.

We agree entirely with an unnamed team official who described the situation as unacceptable.

But it seems to us that even while the WICB must be blamed for failing to make proper arrangements, they are not the only ones at fault in this case.

We are shocked by the reported explanation from the general manager of the Cascadia Hotel, Mr Barry Bidaisee, that the teams had been forced to wait because normal hotel policy dictated a 3:00 pm check-in.

“The teams did arrive early at the hotel and had to wait until the afternoon to be checked in because that is the normal check-in time. We provided a full buffet breakfast and lunch for the teams and most of them were just hanging around the hotel,” Mr Bidaisee is reported as having said.

Surely procedure can’t have been the only reason for the failure to check the players into rooms? We find it hard to believe that the rooms were available but that access was denied to the players. If that was indeed the case, it seems to us that Mr Bidaisee and the management staff of the hotel should join the WICB in hanging their heads in shame.

Nor should the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) escape blame simply because it had warned the chronically incompetent WICB against bringing the teams in on Carnival Tuesday. As hosts, the TTCB had an overriding responsibility to ensure the comfort of the players. We believe that with a degree of effort, the TTCB could have acted to prevent this embarrassment.

As usual, the WICB messed up. But this time they were not the only ones. All concerned should, at the very least, apologise to the Barbados, Jamaica and Windward Islands’ teams. Given the state of cricket administration in the Caribbean, it’s probably asking too much to expect that lessons were learnt from this shambolic episode.