A week after our heartbreaking demotion to the Pepsi ICC World Cricket League Division Four, cricket fans are still stunned and alarmed at what happened in Malaysia.

Last week I concluded my column with a famous quote from John Wooden [the late basketball player and coach]: “Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.”

The quote speaks volumes of what could happen if the Bermuda Cricket Board allow things to stay the way they are.

A week on and no one has resigned. Will anybody hold their hands up and take responsibility for what transpired in Malaysia?

I doubt it, which means, using the aforementioned quote as a guide, in a year’s time this could get even worse and we could find ourselves in Division Five, which would really be fatal. Clearly, other countries are improving swiftly, as you can observe from Malaysia and Singapore’s results, while Bermuda are gradually sinking.

In Division Four we could run into teams such as Italy, Oman and Denmark. These teams are working hard to improve their cricket.

So where does Bermuda go from here so that we don’t plunge into Division Five and instead climb back up to Division Three? A few things need to happen. Firstly, it’s obvious that the Bermuda squad’s management team is not able to get the best out of the players.

When you have just three or four guys showing up to training just weeks before a major tournament, something is seriously wrong. Having been a previous captain and assistant coach of Bermuda, I can categorically tell you that motivation and belief is the key to our success.

Players have to buy into what is being presented to them. They have to feel like they are not wasting their time. If our players feel that the people in charge are not passionate and hungry for success, then their mentality won’t change. At the moment it seems their mentality is one of just going on a trip and letting the chips fall where they may.

If we win, we win and if we don’t, we don’t. Is this what happened in Malaysia? I’m almost positive.

Last week I informed Bermuda’s players via my column that if they wished to express their views on the Malaysia debacle then they could e-mail me. Two players contacted me to share their views.

Player 1 said: “What is the requirement for coaching Bermuda? Should a Bermuda coach at the very least be successful at coaching a local team?”

Player 2 said: “Nothing’s going to happen from this tour, sadly. I guess we will have to wait for the next AGM, which the BCB probably won’t have for a few months in the hope this dies down. Our clubs are to blame, though, because they never vote for change.”

This reminds me of one of my players at Cleveland County. This season I preached and preached about time management, asking players to get to games early so that we could warm-up properly. While some of my players adhered to my request, others did not.

I particularly stressed this point to one player over and over, as he was struggling to score runs and I was expecting great things from him. My question to him was, “when are you going to change and try getting to the game early to give yourself a chance to be successful?”

So with two games left in the season, the player decided to get to the game more than an hour early. The player in question scored 100 runs in that match. The very next match he got to the game early again and scored 40-odd runs.

I sat the team down and highlighted this point and I want to highlight the same thing to the Bermuda cricket fraternity, clubs, coaches, captains and anybody involved in cricket.

The message that he and my players learned was that if you keep doing the same things over and over and getting the same poor results you must be willing to change and try something different.

He tried something different and look what happened.

Why are we afraid of change in Bermuda? What are we afraid of? It cannot get any worse. My bad, yes it can and that is where it becomes fatal.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have all the answers to the problem, but I do know that if we keep going down this road then Division Five will become a reality.

Change is essential if we are going to rebound from the circus that we are presently in. I hate to say it, but the onus falls on the clubs to effect change.

Quote of the week: “Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.” — Wayne Gretzky