IT makes no sense that Ernest Hilaire would want to embarrass the West Indies Under-19 squad which admirably placed third at the Youth World Cup in New Zealand back in January.

I met Hilaire shortly after he was appointed CEO of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB). Based on that meeting I feel sure that shaming the youngsters was the last thing on his mind when he told an audience in Barbados “that almost half of the Under-19 team could barely read or write”.

He probably just got caught up in pleasing his audience as speakers often do. I would not be surprised if in his quiet times he will wishes he could take back that moment — not least because, as I understand it, he was grossly inaccurate.

I am reliably informed that “maybe three” of that 15-man squad that made us all so proud in the cold and damp of New Zealand has “serious issues” with literacy.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that a reduced number changes the fact that there are serious problems with education and literacy which need to be resolved. Just for the record, those issues are not new.

For me, though, Hilaire’s thoughtless comment characterises the inadequacy of the overall debate regarding West Indies cricket.

Part of Hilaire’s problem is that he has gotten caught up in the long-running propaganda war between the WICB and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA).

After the excellent start he made on taking on the job last year — attracting good will from all quarters — Hilaire really should have found a way to stay above the fray.

So now, even as he quite correctly makes the point that the long-awaited cricket academy which opens in Barbados next week will be an important start in a campaign to get West Indies cricket back to where it belongs, he also makes sweeping generalised allegations about the players.

Says Hilaire: “I listen to our players speak, and they speak of money, that’s all that matters to them — instant gratification…” and “Sometimes when you speak to the players, you feel a sense of emptiness. The whole notion of being a West Indian, and for what they are playing has no meaning at all.”

The second point first: From time to time I get a chance to engage with cricketers of all ages. And whether they are 12 or 25, the great majority speak of their burning desire to play for the West Indies — even in these days of successes few and far between. Of course, I speak only of Jamaica, but I struggle to believe it is any different elsewhere in the Caribbean.

As to money, I am in disbelief every time someone makes that point — the clear implication being that our great players of the past were not similarly motivated. It surely can’t be that people like Hilaire have forgotten, or is it that they don’t know that in the late 1970s, Clive Lloyd and his entire team, with the lone exception of Alvin Kallicharan, forsook the aegis of the WICB to play in Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket.

The time would come when Lloyd et al would be praised for their action since it set the stage for cricketers to be paid ‘real money’ for the first time at last. That will remain to their eternal credit.

The indisputable fact, though, is that the long-term legacy for cricketers was never the primary consideration when Lloyd and his great team took off for Australia. They did so because Packer made monetary offers they simply did not feel they could refuse.

Then in 1982 came the most disgraceful episode in the long and eventful history of West Indies cricket. Living legends Lawrence Rowe, Kallicharan and Colin Croft and others such as Sylvester Clarke, Faoud Bacchus, Collis King and Bernard Julien accepted the money of those in South Africa seeking to break the international isolation in sport brought on by apartheid.

For the young among us, apartheid was not just about legislated separation of the races. It involved the elevation of whites as the superior race and the subjugation of all others — with blacks being virtually sub-humanised.

For me, that system ranks alongside Hitler’s Nazism as the most grotesque of the 20th century. Yet despite the pleas of Nelson Mandela, who had already been in prison for 20 years, the African National Congress (ANC) which led the fight against apartheid, regional leaders and well-thinking Caribbean people, Rowe et al still went for the money. I am scandalised to hear that up to not too long ago, Rowe remained unapologetic.

My overall point is that people need to think twice before cussing the current players about greed. At bottom line, cricketers have a very short professional career. They have a responsibility to maximise their earnings while they can for themselves and their families.

Cussing them for seeking to service their contracts in the IPL, for example, makes no sense. The IPL, after all, is part of the ICC official cricket calendar. The WICB should have thought of that when it infamously accepted that offer to tour England in the freezing damp of April/May last year. The Sri Lankans certainly thought the matter through when they refused the tour.

Hilaire is correct when he says there are more embarrassments ahead for West Indies cricket. It is important that he and others know that the academy is only a small part of the solution. We live in hope that it won’t collapse as the short-lived Shell-sponsored version did in mid-decade.

There will have to be junior academies developed throughout the Caribbean — under coherent and uniform direction. The club structure which is falling apart region-wide has to be restored, somehow.

It is so bad in Jamaica that according to national coach Junior Bennett, the very basic facilities at St Elizabeth Technical High School are the best outside of Sabina Park and the Trelawny Stadium.

Crucially, the WICB must find a way to get started with a professional league in West Indies cricket. It makes no sense that a cricketer can only make a sustainable living from his game when he makes the West Indies team. Hilaire and the WICB need to stop talking foolishness and get to work.