CENTURION (South Africa) - As a public relations exercise the West Indies tour of South Africa was more than a national disaster. Their embarrassing performances have affected the pace of the transformation programme as well as curbed enthusiasm in some development areas.

And when several schoolteachers in several black dormitory towns on the Reef confirm that the efforts of Brian Lara's team was so disappointing that a large number of children have serious questions to ask of the West Indies captain.

They looked for heroes but found none; they looked for icons on which to model their own game and develop their technique and were left wondering and disturbed at what they saw. They looked at glossy magazine pictures and asked if Lara and Co were not imposters dressed in West Indies clothes and wearing maroon hats, caps and helmets.

For thousands of youngsters, fed on a diet of West Indies invincibility, to be confronted by this disorganised band of rabble hurt their innocent pride. Men, whose roots lay in Africa, or Asia, have left many hopefuls disillusioned. They were ``bitterly disappointed'' over how the first black adult players they had seen had ``failed them by being second rate'' with some older children feeling ``the West Indians were bereft of genuine playing skills''.

A side which was universally approved in the Caribbean, not only lost the Test series 5-0 and the limited-overs international series 6-1. They also lost credibility and, along the way, the respect of development scheme youngsters who looked to them for guidance but found none.

``There are so many kids who feel cheated by the way the West Indians played there are some lost interest in the game,'' said Monica Bapella, from Tembisa. ``They had been led to believe that here was a side, a black side, with players whom they could identify.''

She talked of projects at some schools where players such as Lara, Carl Hooper and fast bowlers Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh had their playing careers put up on walls.

In early November their names were as revered as much as had been Allan Donald, Jonty Rhodes, Gary Kirsten and Hansie Cronje.

It was to have been the showpiece tour of the ambitious United Cricket Board's strategy. But it flopped. They proved to be paper tigers: no bite, no snap, no growl.

From the time it was hijacked by the mercenary element among the players who then ran the tour for their own benefit, the roles of manager Clive Lloyd and Malcolm Marshall were seen to be redundant.

Player power, depicted as despotic and egotistical heavily laced with financial greed, saw the side drift in different directions, leaderless on the field and disjointed off it. The public felt defrauded by the poor quality of skills the players exhibited in a Test series which became so one-sided that the West Indies managed to win about two and half sessions out of a possible 60 and a half sessions played during the five Tests.

Lara lamented at SuperSport Centurion how the 6-1 limited overs series defeat was ``disappointing result'' but declined to admit it had caused serious indigestion among the players who had lost interest in the exercise and were unable to stomach further humiliation.

Little wonder Curtly Ambrose declined to play the last match Little wonder too that Lloyd, the manager, and the coach, Marshall, known for their sense of humour and good natured friendliness, were often seen as outsiders. Lara and the gang who won their ``industrial action'' at a London Airport hotel controlled a side which wrecked a tour that was to have been historic as well as further unifying the West Indies and South African brotherhood.

By the time the listing hulk arrived for the final match of the slogs there were many who were disenchanted.

Their loyal fans had long slipped off home, dwindling to a handful. Some stayed on to enjoy the warm South African hospitality before they too departed wondering if there is a future for the game as they know it in the Caribbean, and distressed at how thousand of black South African school children felt betrayed.

More than that, great names from the past who rallied around the side, such as Conrad Hunte became just as disenchanted by the open greed of a few players who, at the expense of the greater interest of the game in their islands, brought international shame on themselves.

While prime minsters from most islands and governments became involved in trying to solve the early tour crisis, the West Indies Cricket Board were seen to be the bad guys. They bowed ``in the best interests and fairness in the name of West Indies sport'' to rescind their decision to fire Lara as captain and Hooper as his deputy.

From that point, despite Lara's ``apology to the South African public'' the tour was doomed as internal friction, which often burst into the open, split the team.

Now the WICB, led by their president, Pat Rousseau, have to pick up the pieces and stitch together what they can out of the mess left by government interference in the pay debacle

In a subdued mood after the last match of the tour at SuperSport Centurion, Lara admitted he was quite prepared to serve the West Indies in any capacity if the board saw fit to dispense with his services as captain. Whatever reports Lara, Lloyd and Marshall submitted to the WICB on their views of what went wrong, the board's interest in the tour lost touch to the extent they were not aware of the result of the match in Bloemfontein until newspaper reports the next day.

To bring out a side as allegedly as strong as this one and then watch it disintegrate match by match, the pieces clattering rung by rung down a ladder named ``chaos'', was more like watch a surrealist dream unfold: detached and disjointed, frame by frame. Under Lara they were leaderless; only when Carl Hooper temporarily took over was there a sense of cohesion on the field.

But out of the rubble we saw there was still a spark of fighting spirit. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, sacrificed when forced to bat at three in the tests, impressed on and off the field; Franklyn Rose, a shock omission from the Port Elizabeth Test, Darren Ganga, a totally pleasant young man with a growing talent who was subjected to heavy pressure; Mervyn Dillon and Reon King, drafted in for the slogs and not given a chance to settle. A small core, but one the Windies can build on.

Then there is Jimmy Adams, the man who led West Indies A on their tour of South Africa 12 months before, was missing through a strange accident. Lara admitted Adams' ability to cement an innings together when under pressure, was a missing component in the team's lower middle-order make up. He should return to the side for the matches against Australia and the difference should be immediately noticeable with Ridley Jacobs at seven form a solid lower-order foundation.

There were the puzzling omissions of Vasbert Drakes, a bowler who had to play for Border in South Africa if he was to survive at all; and Ottis Gibson from the original touring party. Gibson did play in the fourth Test at Newlands.

Hiding behind the excuse that Drakes had not played in the Caribbean the previous season as the reason for his exclusion is as false as suggesting Sir Garfield Sobers, because he played in Australia, did not deserve to be part of the team either.

Yet the biggest problem was, apart from the first innings opening partnership between Philo Wallace and Junior Murray in the third Test at Kingsmead, was the lack of a substantial top-order batting. And there is no end to this problem, despite Lara's claim the best players available in the West Indies were either in South Africa or the A team on the sub-continent. The legacy left by Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge has not been nurtured.

If there is to be a hope for the West Indies, as a unity factor, the cure lies within and governments making available funds to establish an academy. Reg Scarlett, a former Test player who had a look at the South African system of regeneration, said as much in Durban during the third Test.

In the Caribbean island identity and independence is jealously guarded. To the outside world the islands which make up the cricket community are regarded as part of the greater West Indies. C L R James, the great writer and philosopher, Sir Frank Worrell and George Headley, great icons of the West Indies past, must be weeping from their pavilion chairs in the sky at how the sport which gave the West Indies an identity of whch to be proud is being destroyed.

When he arrived in South Africa a week late and apologised for delaying to the start of the tour, Lara said there had been no intention not to come to South Africa.

It was suggested, more than once during the tour that he should apologise again for the way they played.

Perhaps he should now apologise to the West Indian public for the shame he inflicted on them and step down as captain and give it to someone more deserving.

How it has all changed. In 1993, after the triangular Total Trophy series, Lara signed with Northerns for a few day/night matches. On a wet afternoon at Centurion Park, he talked quietly and with a certain shy humbleness of his thoughts about the game and the great West Indies future. He also talked with deep insight on what he referred to ``the soul of batting''.

Always friendly, and open, willing to share a joke, join in a meal or a drink, the young man known as Brian Charles Lara was humility itself. He trained hard and talked of his passion for batting and desire for winning.

When he returned 18 moths later, two world records etched on the game's roll of honour and much more famous he brushed aside his ``friends'' of those few weeks in Centurion. They had gone to see him at the airport with an invitation to dinner.

But out stepped one B C Lara, with a new girlfriend, and far more interested in the limelight and the sound of cash jingling in his pocket.

That image has not changed down the years and with it lies the wreckage of a sport which spelt fame and hope for generations of Caribbean people.