Dylan Cleaver: Nelson may see final sinking of West Indies

The West Indies and Ireland meet in New Zealand's sunshine capital. Photo / AP

When talk turns to salivating opening-round match-ups, it usually centres on Melbourne, where Australia meets England, or Adelaide, where those great foes India and Pakistan will meet.

Few mention Nelson and the civilised surrounds of Saxton Oval, but mark down Monday as a must-watch because it has potential to be the first real boilover of the tournament - a prospect both invigorating and downright sad.

The West Indies and Ireland meet in New Zealand's sunshine capital. One of those teams has been busting a gut to prove their mettle on the international stage, the other has simply given up.

The decline and fall of the West Indian empire has been exhaustively documented, but it has become all the more poignant as Sky's pop-up World Cup channels show just how omnipotent they were until the second innings of the 1983 final, when they shockingly collapsed to a wildly inferior India team.

That was one day, one game, but the collapse foretold the future of West Indian cricket, a catastrophe that has left the sport poorer.

They have never made it back to a final and if you'd told anybody that while they were at their pomp, they wouldn't have believed it. This year, by picking a team with an eye to 2019 (seriously!), they've officially stopped trying.

This is a team that does not trust those charged with running the game in the region. The West Indies Cricket Board is an administration that doesn't trust the players it represents. It is proving to be a recipe for destruction.

The West Indies packed their bags and left a tour of India recently after failing to come to terms with their board. Senior players Dwayne Bravo and Keiron Pollard - two of their more accomplished limited overs players - were then jettisoned from the World Cup squad in a classic case of the WICB cutting off their nose and ears to spite their face.

The West Indies still have talent, but do they have the heart for a fight? Not if the evidence in Sydney yesterday was anything to go by, when England's moderately useful Chris Woakes knocked the top off their derelict batting with a five-wicket haul to have them out for 122 in the 30th over.

Wrote respected and long-time commentator Tony Cozier: "West Indies' unlikely prospects of going as far as the semifinal for the first time since 1996 depend on whether Chris Gayle finds the fitness and the form for one last, memorable World Cup hurrah, Marlon Samuels sets his sights beyond pretty 70s and 80s, Andre Russell controls his lively bowling and fierce hitting, Jerome Taylor starts taking wickets as he used to... and the team as a whole sheds its traditional inconsistency."

As Cozier himself mentioned, that is a whole lot of ifs. The semifinal might be a long shot, but a surge of optimism brought about by the return of Kemar Roach and the outrageously talented and underachieving Darren Bravo should be enough to lift them over Ireland. Should.

Still, there is enough doubt to make Nelson, whose flannelled fame was limited to a bunch of outstanding Hawke Cup sides in decades long past, the centre of the cricketing universe for a day.