The domestic cricket season starts on Saturday and the importance of the next four months for the national team, and the game in general, cannot be underestimated.Bermuda stands at a cross-roads, and the wrong decisions over the next few days and weeks will either mark the –beginning of a turnaround, or plunge the Island further into oblivion.Relegation to Division Three in April marked a new low point for a national team that has been on the slide for the past five years, and it will take a complete change in focus to arrest that –decline.The Island’s record on the field since 2006 is nothing short of appalling. In the past five years they have managed just one win of any note, beating Scotland at the World Cricket League Division One tournament in 2007, which was their only win of the competition.Aside from that, and a victory against a less than enthusiastic UAE side in January, Bermuda’s victories have largely come against the likes of Suriname, Argentina, and Cayman Islands.In the past three years, Bermuda have been well beaten by Namibia, UAE, Uganda, Canada, and even USA, who are now in Division Four.They did beat Hong Kong last month though, on their way to being relegated to Division Three of the World Cricket League.It hasn’t all been doom and gloom however. The $9.2m that Government has pumped into the sport in that time has made the Bermuda Cricket Board the envy of cricket administrators around the world.Only last week, vice-presidents Lloyd Fray and Allen Richardson lauded the big strides forward made by the governing body, with Fray claiming the BCB had been “outstandingly successful in the past eight years and has repeatedly and deservedly, won international honours for the quality of its development programmes, it’s governance and management, and it’s operational effectiveness”.Richardson praised chief executive Neil Speight for leading the “organisation through an outstanding period, completely professionalising and reshaping the model of sports governance and management in cricket”.There is no arguing with Speight’s popularity with the game’s administrators, as his election as Chairman of all Associate and Affiliates on the ICC Executive Board, and his regular trips to the ICC’s headquarters in Dubai, shows.How successful the development programme, which is judged alongside the likes of Canada and USA who look abroad for the majority of their players, has been, is debatable however.The Under-19s failed to make it past the regional qualifiers for the World Cup in February, and senior players are making it into the national team without knowing how to run between the wickets.Still for those that make the Bermuda Under-13s, they do get a $50,000 all expenses paid trip to the West Indies every year.Bermuda though are still the only Associate nation without turf practice wickets, or good practice facilities in general. The gap between Premier Division cricket and the international game is wider than it has ever been, and matches are still played on grounds that are too small to challenge the better players.The newly created Elite Player League is supposed to provide some remedy to that problem, but will only do so if the majority of games are played at the –National Sports Centre.As Bermuda’s failings in April proved, the Island’s players are generally incapable of scoring on large grounds, and must be exposed to better cricket, on better wickets, and on bigger grounds if they are to take the national team back up the Associate rankings.Improvement though has to be bottom up, as well as top down, and with six teams in the First Division, promotion ought to be limited to just the champions.There is even an argument to be made for scraping promotion and relegation altogether and having the bottom side in the Premier Division play-off with the First Division’s best side for the right to be in the top flight.