Parfitt long at all to come to the conclusion that Bermuda's cricket has made little, if any, improvement.

In fact, despite two morale-boosting victories in the last two matches of the Jamaican tour, the Island's most successful bowler feels Bermuda's cricket is going backwards.

Parfitt has never been one to mince his words when it comes to the game locally and his latest observations came after watching Bermuda beat the Jamaicans last weekend, just two days after he returned home for his testimonial match.

It was his first look at Bermuda's cricket locally in six years, but coming from a man who used to single-handedly win matches against strong touring teams, the problems were very evident.

Gone are the quality pace and medium pace bowlers, and nowadays spin is relied on even more heavily to penetrate opposing teams' batting.

Parfitt cautions that too much can be put into the two victories especially considering the Jamaicans were without many of their top players, including Test men Courtney Walsh and Jimmy Adams.

"Looking at the teams that used to come here years ago from the West Indies I thought this was an experimental team from Jamaica more so than their national team,'' said Parfitt.

"Even though St. George's beat them on the Saturday it showed that they were not as strong as teams of the past. We still have a lot of work to do because our players do not know how to play limited overs cricket.

"They think it is smash, wham, bam but it's no sense scoring 40 runs in three overs and then being out because you're not helping your team.'' Few would disagree with the claim that the game has been on the slide since probably Bermuda's strongest ICC team of 1979 just narrowly failed to qualify for the World Cup. Parfitt was in that team but his departure, alongwith that of Adrian King, Winston (Coe) Trott and El James robbed the country of its better strike bowlers.

Now there isn't a single fast bowler who would be an automatic selection for the national team, as the bowling lags far behind the batting at the national level. That was evident in the last ICC when in the last three matches Bermuda's opponents scored over 300 runs to deny Bermuda a spot in the World Cup.

"The bowling is weak but the batting is strong to a point,'' said Parfitt.

"In limited overs cricket you have to build an innings and not slug an innings.'' Parfitt played with and against the Island's top current players during Saturday's testimonial and was able to observe the level of play.

"I think Bermuda has a lot of great individual players but to play as a team is more important than being an individual,'' he said.

"One person cannot achieve anything in any sport without his team-mates. And that's what I see, all individuals playing for Bermuda.

"Until the Bermuda Cricket Board of Control gets their act together we're going to stay like that and we're going to go backward rather than forward.

We've gone back a long way, internationally as well as in domestic cricket.'' Parfitt also played a bit in the ex-players' match which kicked off Saturday's activities. Many of the top players of the past three decades were present, coming out to pay tribute to the Island's most successful cricketer.

"Bermuda can do more for cricket than what they're really doing now,'' believes Parfitt. "They are not honouring some of our better players that played and did so well and represented Bermuda with pride and dignity.

"It was an outstanding game, the older guys really put on a show today, but the youngsters still have a lot of work to do. Bermuda has to wake up and get themselves a national coach here to develop cricket in the schools.

"I don't have a clue what the BCBC is thinking of or where they expect the game to go with the way it's going now. From what I've seen the BCBC is doing nothing to improve it.'' On Friday, Parfitt heads back to his home in Scotland and back to his involvement with the cricket setup there. He holds a position as a selector of the national team.