Bermuda played at the Cricket World Cup in 2007, but seven years on and $11 million later, we have plummeted to an all-time low after dropping miserably into ICC World Cricket League Division Four.

How has this happened? Who is to blame? Will there be some resignations? These are some of the questions Bermuda’s cricket fans will be asking.

After all, someone has to be held accountable.

Bermuda’s downfall should be a lesson to all local cricketers that you only get out what you put in.

There are only a few players that can categorically say that they were committed to training.

We seem to think that our talent alone will get us by, but at that next level we continuously get exposed because we fail to demonstrate a strong work ethic.

Let’s talk about the team’s lack of preparation.

As a group, they played only two practice matches before such an important tournament. How does this happen? We have known for months that this tournament was taking place.

To top it off, the tournament was being played in Malaysia, yet we had a week of preparation in Dubai, where the conditions and wickets are completely different.

From the information I gathered, the wickets in Dubai are quite fast and provide very little turn, while the wickets in Malaysia are a little slow, low, and turn quite a bit.

OK, the tournament destination got changed at the eleventh hour, which means it may have been hard to change plans, but why have we deviated from what worked for us in the past?

Bermuda would always go to a major tournament a week before and play at least three games in that country.

Even if we went to Dubai for a training camp, we still should have been arriving in Malaysia a week before the tournament started.

With the type of preparation we provided for our players, we were setting them up to fail before they even boarded the plane.

From reports I garnered from the internet, it seems as though our opponents had far better preparation.

This from the Asian cricket council: “Malaysia’s cricketers have been training like never before as they prepare for the Incheon Asian Games and Pepsi ICC World Cricket League Division Three.

“There is an amazing level of commitment from the players and I’m confident it will pay off in results on the pitch,” said Malaysia coach Bilal Asad, who has been instrumental in recruiting the services of fitness trainer Sheraz Khalid from the Pakistan Cricket Board for Malaysia.

“Members of the national squad are housed at the Kinrara Oval and supported with financial stipends in a pioneering show of support from the Malaysian Cricket Association for their players.”

For a tournament of this magnitude, Bermuda should have played a minimum of ten practice matches.

This would have allowed the coaching staff to work on different batting and bowling combinations. Bermuda could have also played multiple Cup Match trials against both Somerset and St George’s.

September should have been devoted to the Elite League. That way, our top players would have been playing quality cricket right up until the tournament. What the Bermuda Cricket Board needs to do right now is get to the core of the problem. Why do our players not want to train and represent Bermuda?

This is the No 1 question that needs to be addressed. Is it the coach/manager? Is it the training methods? Is it because there are no incentives? Is it because they think the Bermuda set-up is a joke? Are they unhappy with the training facilities?

I would be interested to hear from players at claysmith60@hotmail.com, as we need to get to the bottom of this. If players are reluctant to go public and speak — well, let me be your voice.

I’m a believer that if you start wrong, you will end wrong. Coach Arnold Manders’s decision to change the captain was one major factor.

Stephen Outerbridge was one of our youngsters at the 2007 World Cup and was being groomed to lead Bermuda for the next five years. However, we may have lost him in the wilderness, like so many of our other players.

Unfortunately, Manders became sick just prior to going to Malaysia, which hindered the team further. I wish him a speedy recovery, as there was nothing he could do about that.

However, who made the decision about his replacement? Was the captain at least consulted? Was Allan Douglas the right man for the job? Was it Douglas or Manders making the decisions?

Here are a few things that still have me puzzled:

• Three games into the tournament and we used three different combinations for opening batting partners.

• For the most part, the batting order fitted Janeiro Tucker, Lionel Cann, Allan Douglas Jr and Malachi Jones together. All batsmen who like to hit the ball, so where is the balance of having a grafter, someone who can just rotate the strike, and help to avoid batting collapses?

• Delray Rawlins had an outstanding season, scoring a half-century on his Cup Match debut. He plays spin better than half the players in the team, but came in at No 10 when the game was begging for someone to bat long in the middle of our innings.

• We batted for 50 overs only once in six games — 26.5 against the United States, 40.1 against Nepal, 50 against Malaysia, 27.5 against Singapore, 39.5 against Uganda, and 19.3 against the US in the play-off, simply deplorable.

• Tucker was deployed as an opening batsman one game, which still has me baffled.

• Jones’s lack of bowling throughout the tournament (he did not bowl at all in one game) was very strange.

• Cann and Tucker did not play against Uganda or the US in the play-off. Why? Are they retiring? In a tournament of this magnitude, for them not to play against Uganda could have cost another country promotion.

We need to start teaching our players from a young age about national pride.

The last game against the US was an embarrassment. Our batsmen batted anywhere in the order with Dion Stovell at No 9, Tre Manders at No 7, while Manders, who does not usually bowl, had seven overs for 64 runs — even our wicketkeeper Christian Burgess had an over.

It was simply farcical and quite pathetic. This should not go unnoticed and needs to be addressed by the BCB.

Bermuda’s players can learn a lot from the Jamaican bobsleigh team in the hit movie Cool Runnings, who showed that while winning is not everything, you must always demonstrate national pride right to the very end.

If plummeting into Division Four does not tell you that our priorities are in the wrong place, nothing will.

Quote of the week: Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be — John Wooden (late basketball player and coach)