There has been much talk in recent years about what’s needed to get the West Indies back to the top of world cricket.

The Twenty20 style is still in its infancy and may not be the best barometer, nonetheless this newspaper feels the just-ended ICC tournament in the Caribbean provided a wake-up call for those of us optimists.

England, the eventual champions, demonstrated great physical fitness, high mental fortitude and wonderful technical ability to storm through to the final and crush the highly fancied Australia.

It was a stunning all-round performance from a side which had never before won a world cricket tournament despite infrastructure of the highest quality and plentiful professional competition at the domestic level.

Having watched, we have to wonder, how could the West Indies and its loyal supporters ever have expected to win this tournament?

We have said it before in this space, we say it again, far from being underachievers, the West Indies have actually overachieved in international cricket.

West Indians love to reminisce on the great teams of the past, in particular the world-beaters of the late-1970s, -80s and early -90s which thrived on the professionalism gained on the English County circuit and Mr Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket of the late-1970s. It’s no accident that once it became difficult for West Indians to play in the top professional league in England, the regional team went into decline.

Yet, we must not forget that even in the bad years that have persisted since the mid- to late-1990s there have been a few notable West Indies successes such as the ICC Limited Overs Champions Trophy of 2004 and the Test Series triumph over England last year, which stunned the cricketing world. Those rare and precious successes for the West Indies occurred despite the absence of basic training/preparation infrastructure taken for granted in most developed cricket-playing countries, despite the absence of a professional league at territorial or club level, despite the absence of a nursery/academy programme for young cricketers and despite the chronically dysfunctional state of the administrative body, the West Indies Cricket Board.

What the English demonstrated in recent weeks is that they have now finally got to a stage where they are prepared to join the Australians in lifting the bar. If we are to follow the thought to a logical conclusion, we would have to say that the West Indies now have even more work to get to the top — not just in the traditional Test match format but in the shorter versions.

And yet, for all that, hope springs eternal for the West Indies cricket fan. So that although we know deep down that it defies logic we still expect to beat the highly ranked South Africans now on tour of the Caribbean.

The two Twenty20 games have come and gone in a heated rush with victory for the visitors, albeit the last by just one run.

Today begins a five-match 50-over series to be followed by three Test matches — the latter, for cricket followers, being likely to have a far more lasting effect on the memory.

The optimists among us will hope that West Indies captain Mr Chris Gayle and his men will locate that strength and determination to defy the odds yet again.

More to the point though, we await the long-promised delivery by the West Indies Cricket Board of an academy programme and a proper professional structure for our cricketers. We note and applaud the revival of the ‘A” team programme and the success so far of the squad now on tour of Bangladesh.

Now let’s get the other elements in place.