Happy New Year to all my readers everywhere. Your responses and critiques have been wonderful over the last year. Keep them coming.

Cricket in 2001 could be so much more fun, after the beating the game took in 2000. Continue to enjoy the game, whatever level it is played at.

In some cultures, 1 January, 2001 is the start of the third millennium. In others, this new year is greeted as The Year of the Snake.

Knowing how this extremely cunning reptile has continued to prosper, I hope that cricket could apply similar cunning and progress to make the new year a wonderful example of what fair play could be in our professional sport.

For the fifth Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, featuring the West Indies and Australia, the hosts are on a roll, and will be looking for a 5-0 whitewash, another record never achieved against the West Indies. As has been said so many times previously, winning is a great habit to get into, so I doubt that the Australians will be anything but their tough, ruthless selves as the try to make it 15 Test match wins in a row.

The Australians will even "celebrate", both the centenary of their wonderful country and, implicitly, their team's dominance in cricket, with the issuing of some specially struck coins and cricket caps. Tremendous stuff! What a great appreciation of one of the world's "real" democracies.

For the West Indies, there is only pride to play for. In its last message for 2000, and a rallying call for the new year, the West Indies Cricket Board pointed to two things; one that affected cricket generally, and the other with specific reference to West Indies cricket.

The board referred to the match-fixing scandal of 2000. This will probably live with us cricketing people, and some outside the game, for some time to come. Scepticism is one of those cultivated attitudes which, once attained, never leaves, regardless how much the situation may seem to have changed. Many of us will have doubts about some cricket games, some from the past, some, I assure you, in the future, probably to our deaths.

The West Indies Cricket Board's communiqué continued: "Closer to home, disappointing on-field returns of the West Indies Test cricket team on overseas tours continue to concern all with an interest in our cricket.

"The road back to the pinnacle of world cricket will not be easy and, as we contemplate our future, one of our New Year's resolutions must be to rededicate ourselves to supporting our cricket to the fullest.

"Our players and the surrounding infrastructure will require our strongest allegiance as we seek to recapture glory in which our cricket once basked.

"Hopefully, with this backing, it will not be long before we are rewarded with the kinds of returns that this year saw Courtney Walsh become the world's leading wicket–taker, Curtly Ambrose celebrate 400 Test wickets, and, most recently, Ridley Jacobs earn a share of the Test record for the most catches in an innings, seven."

In a nutshell, the West Indies Cricket Board may have sent a message for all of us involved in cricket anywhere in the world. Hope springs eternal!

2001 must be a better year for West Indies cricket than 2000. On the other hand, one expects that Australia will continue to try to make this year as good as the last.

The New Year's Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground will be the 1,527th Test match played. Like everything else associated with the game for the ensuing year, all we ask is that a good time is had by all, and that both teams put on a good show. We all deserve at least that!

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