Not quite an annus horribilis but as close as Bermuda cricket has come in recent years, there aren’t many people involved in the game on the Island who won’t be glad to see the back of 2011.From failures on the pitch, to failed drug tests off it, the past 12 months have largely been one disapointment after another, and Bermuda’s relegation to Division Three of the World Cricket League was far from being the worst thing that happened.Domestically the standard of cricket, more often than not, never rose above the mediocre while several players sunk to new lows with their behaviour, a pattern which ultimately culminated in the abandonment of a game at Sea Breeze Oval resulting in a nine month ban for former Bermuda skipper Irving Romaine.Whether the ban was harsh is a matter of opinion, but it highlighted a downward spiral in standards within the game during a season that also saw umpires refuse to officiate at one venue and next season could see the game lose their services altogether if the pattern continues.The behaviour of some clubs was little better than that of the players and the Eastern Counties row will now rumble on into its fourth year with there being little sign that the two sides can reach agreement in a squable that the public are rapidly losing any sympathy for.As for the fortunes of the Bermuda national team, well, there were a mixed bag of results to say the least.They opened up with a trianing tour of Dubai in January, and while most of Bermuda’s triumphs were against a talented UAE under-19 side, they also beat the senior UAE team for the first time in six attempts and the tour saw the return of Lionel Cann and the emergence of Kamau Leverock, who scored his maiden international 50, as a player of genuine promise.The missing players meanwhile stayed missing and their absence contributed to Bermuda’s miserable appearance at the ICC World Cricket League Division Two tournament in Dubai in April.In a week that exposed all that was bad about the game in Bermuda, opening bowler Malachi Jones managed just three overs before missing the rest of the tournament through injury and the only highlights were Jason Anderson’s century in the solitary win over Hong Kong and Dion Stovell’s blistering, yet ultimately worthless, 73 against Namibia.Results at international level show a national team in decline and the fact that Bermuda again failed to beat Canada or USA in the Twenty20 tournament in July shows just how far the team has fallen.David Moore has been in charge for roughly 18 months and he hasn’t yet been able to name a starting XI featuring the ‘best’ players on the Island. The Australian has used 39 players in the 41 matches that he has been in charge, Bermuda have lost 28 of them.No matter what David Hemp or Moore may say publicly, Bermuda are not going to succeed at the Twenty20 Global Qualifiers in Dubai next March and their chances of escaping Division Three in 2013 look equally slim.Breaking the cycle of mediocrity is going to require a change in culture, which Moore has been trying to do, not always with the support he might have hoped for, and the events of this season suggest it might be time to change the personnel, on and off the field, as well.The arrival of Lloyd Fray as the new president of the Bermuda Cricket Board might not bring that change, not directly at least. Fray has indicated that he intends to focus his efforts on the domestic game and developing the next generation.Certainly there is enough evidence to suggest that the domestic game is broken, even though many of the season’s highlights were provided by club players.May brought the all too familiar sight of Southampton Rangers lifting the Belco Cup for a seventh time after they beat PHC avenging the defeat the Warwick club had inflicted on them a year earlier. Once again Janeiro Tucker dragged his side across the finish line, but if Rangers fans were expecting victory to be the launch pad for an assault on the Premier Division title they were to be sadly disapointed.Rangers’ rapidly ageing side struggled for most of the year, flirting with relegation for much of it, and only pulled themselves out of danger at the very end. The Southampton club also won the Lindos Twenty20 in September, becoming the first team other than St David’s to do so, but given the contempt many sides showed for the competition, they might be the last winners as well.As a team St David’s dominated for much of the summer, and the fact that Warriors trio Stefan Kelly, Lionel Cann and Fiqre Crockwell all played in St George’s triumphant Cup Match side was no coincidence.Bailey’s Bay might have pushed Wendell Smith’s side close in their run to the 50 over title, but they fell foul of the new bonus points system, dropping 10 for the number of wides they sent down over the course of the season.Bay’s season wasn’t a complete washout though, they regained the Eastern Counties trophy, albeit in a competition still missing St David’s and Glenn Blakeney produced the season’s best batting performance with his record breaking knock of 218, surpassing Noel Gibbons’ previous record of 183.St David’s spent the season in the news for one reason or another, from the Eastern Counties row, to their dominance on the pitch, to a finish that saw Cann quit the club over a row concerning drug abuse amongst his team-mates.Elsewhere Cleveland County, a shining example of what can be achieved with good coaching, will join a new six-team Premier Division next season and while a streamlined top-flight should go some way to improving the standard of domestic cricket, it probably doesn’t go far enough.A strong national team needs a strong domestic competition, but at the moment the top sides are still too diluted by average cricketers, while some good cricketers, such as Somerset’s Joshua Gilbert, are wasting their time in the First Division.There simply aren’t 66 good cricketers on the Island, at a stretch there are 44, and in the absence of an ‘Elite League’ the top flight should probably be cut even further.Bermuda Cricket Board’s own numbers bare this out too. Only three batsmen managed to average more than 50 over the course of the season, with Clay Smith, dodgy knees and all, coming out on top averaging 81 runs. OJ Pitcher was next with 66.75 and Tre Manders third with 53.1. After that Ricardo Brangman and Chris Douglas both averaged 39.33. Bermuda opener Dion Stovell, meanwhile, scored 234 runs at an average of just 26.So that, by and large, was 2011.The dawning of a new year will inevitably bring fresh hopes and renewed optimisim for old dreams, albeit with slighly lower expectations than there were previously.In time the final days of a somewhat miserable year will be replaced by the light of a new spring, but those days are still some way off.For now the gloom continues, the memories of a season that brought more pain than joy remain as fresh as ever and for many players, coaches, supporters and officials, December 31 hasn’t come quickly enough.