Caribbean great Viv Richards concerned over Windies cricket downfall

Sydney, Mar 17(ANI): Legendary West Indian batsman Sir Viv Richards has said he is troubled by the decline of cricket in the Caribbean islands.

The West Indies team is currently ranked seventh in the ICC table.

Richards believes there are many reasons for the downfall, but also rejected the often stated conclusion that the appeal of basketball and the National Basketball Association (NBA) was the primary channel for their fall from grace in the late 1990s.

"It's a weak excuse. We've had basketball long before West Indies cricket started to go downhill," The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Richards, as saying.

"We played at the same time as the greatest basketballers, in my opinion, Michael Jordan. He, I felt, was just like the Pied Piper when the game was concerned, and we came through then," he said.

"It's an argument that I think administrators would like to hear, because it does stop them maybe taking some of the blame for the direction sometimes they've taken us into. There is quite a lot to be done. There is a lot of folks, I think in the region, crying out over the way the administrators have been performing," he added. (ANI)