As a tribute to the historic victory by the West Indies team here are the editorials of some of the leading daily newspapers in the region:

Barbados Nation | Jamaica Gleaner | Jamaica Observer | Trinidad Express | Trinidad Guardian

Jamaica Observer
A triumph of the West Indian Spirit - Wednesday  May 14, 2003

BRIAN Lara, holder of world records for most runs in an innings in Test and first class cricket, has described yesterday's incredible West Indies triumph over Australia in St John's, Antigua as the greatest moment in his cricketing life.

All of us can surely appreciate his feelings. When Vasbert Drakes cracked Stuart MacGill away to the cover boundary to carry the West Indies team to victory, the entire Caribbean felt a joy that was almost unparalleled.

One reason of course was that the Caribbean team had broken a 27-year-old record. The 418-7 for seven made by the West Indies to beat Australia by three wickets, bettered the previous record of 406-4 made by India -- ironically against the West Indies -- at Port of Spain in 1976.

But there was far more to this than an audacious defiance of history. Make no mistake about it, the Australian bowling attack that fell under the sword of Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, skipper Lara, 20 year-old Omari Banks and Drakes is by far the best in the world.

The world champions had already more than showed their mettle by convincingly thrashing the youthful West Indies team in the first three Tests of the series. They started the final Test intent on creating their own piece of history -- becoming the first team ever to complete a clean sweep of the Caribbean team in their backyard.

'Here we go again', we all thought, as the Australians after being pegged back by the home team in the first half of the game reached 242-0 at one stage of their second innings.

Yet, the West Indian bowlers -- one short in the absence of an injured Jermaine Lawson -- showed the fight, talent, discipline and determination that was all too often missing in the first three Tests, to restrict their powerful opponents to 417 all out.

But even as we commend the bowlers and lived in hope of a great innings from our champion Lara, the thought of a West Indian victory looked almost laughable.

And when Lara fell mid-way the fourth day with just 165 of the required runs knocked off, the West Indies looked dead and buried.

Those were the circumstances in which Sarwan, only 22, and the seasoned Chanderpaul scored their memorable counter-attacking centuries and turned the game on its head.

And as tension boiled over in the wake of the umpiring error that sent back Ridley Jacobs, we saw Banks -- surely one of the coolest 20 year-olds in the history of West Indies cricket -- keeping his head, even after the loss of Chanderpaul, to carry his team home in tandem with Drakes.

That this was a triumph of the West Indian spirit is beyond argument.

In our view, it also reflected the gradual 'coming to come' of a number of talented young cricketers that will in the not-too-distant future make West Indies cricket great again.

But it is important that we do not lose perspective. After all, our heroes won just one game. They lost the series massively, 3-1. There is hard work to be done both in terms of the unearthing and development of quality young bowlers and in making sure that our young batsmen continue to grow and mature.

And at the administrative level there is much to do. The several recent embarrassments, including the bungled attempt to hire an overseas coach and the unexplained non-selection of Chris Gayle for the first two Tests of the Australia series speaks to a level of inefficiency and absence of accountability, that is unacceptable.

We can only hope that our administrators will get the basics right as they move to correct the bowling action of Lawson, who is now under the scrutiny of the International Cricket Council (ICC). Getting the basics right is very often all it takes.