Perhaps cricket has already run its course in the West Indies. Perhaps cricket has already done all that it is capable of doing for the West Indian people and the World Cup represents cricket’s last gift to the islands.

Cricket has played a lavish and extraordinary part in the development of the nations of the Anglophone Caribbean. The victory of West Indies over England in 1950 was a landmark event, one that showed how the world had changed. The appointment of Frank Worrell as West Indies’ first full-time black captain in 1960 was another and greater advance. In this way, sport not only represents, but helps to shape, the society it is played in, a point made in what is still one of the best sports books written, C. L. R. James’s Beyond A Boundary.

The West Indies revitalised world cricket. The calypso cricketers of the 1960s expressed a heady joy and athleticism, a revelation to the countries they played against and to the people of the West Indies themselves. This was a cricket team, by extension a people, unbound.

I remember walking into the pavilion in Bridgetown, Barbados, to be greeted by a ferocious head-on picture of Wes Hall, the great fast bowler of that era. “Who’s that fellow?” I asked. “Was he a spinner?” My companion was Wes Hall. “There’s people who come into this pavilion who still duck,” he said. The moving spirit of these stirring times was Garry Sobers, both a genius and an embodiment of sporting joy.

But times change. In 1976, West Indies suffered a traumatic defeat by Australia, with Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson at their fastest and most hostile. Clive Lloyd, the beleaguered West Indies captain, was prompted to revenge, a revenge on the entire cricketing world.

He went into the attack with four fast bowlers of unimagined hostility, backed up by thunderous, intelligent batting. West Indies became the finest team on the planet, perhaps the finest team there has been, and certainly the most feared. Lloyd’s genius was not just in the temerity of his assault on the cricket world, but also, in uniting his team, silencing the inter-island factions and creating a single, implacable unit.

Never mind the calypsos. This was reggae cricket: get up, stand up; stand up for your rights. The slaves had become masters, the oppressed had become symbolic oppressors and it was as if every valley had been exalted, every mountain laid low. Cricket trumpeted out the message: black people can beat anyone; black people can do anything.

West Indies won the first two World Cups, in 1975 and 1979, and did so with extravagant ease. I was at Lord’s for the third final in 1983, when they played India and were expected to cruise it. But they didn’t. Hubris undid them. As they chased a paltry 183, batsman after batsman was out swiping and slogging. If India had set a more challenging total, West Indies would have won.

It was the beginning of the end of the West Indies hegemony, the beginning of the shift in cricket’s financial and political power. Still, West Indies marched on for a few more years, with the two “blackwash” Test series, in which England were beaten 5-0 both home and away.

But in sport, nothing is for ever. I remember a briefly resurgent England in Bridgetown in 1990, when they took the fight to West Indies and had them rocking, leading 1-0 going into the fourth Test. And then, on one unforgettable evening, Curtly Ambrose willed it otherwise.

It was one of the truly great spells of bowling, backed by a crowd high on hope and expectation. The intensity of the crowd’s desire for England wickets was mind-boggling. I left the press box and watched from the boundary with the shouters and the leapers and it was one of the most vivid sporting experiences of my life. Ambrose had five wickets in five overs, finishing with eight for 45. West Indies went on to win in Antigua and take the series.

But the great days were already gone. The fast bowling conveyor belt had slowed down. The unity vanished. West Indies had no option but to build the team around Brian Lara, a man of brilliance prone to preening and disruption.

The old certainty about cricket had gone. West Indies had changed. The sugar-dominated economy was a thing of the past; tourism was what mattered now, with visitors and investment coming mostly from the United States. West Indies was less and less an offshoot of old England, more and more a suburb of Miami. Cricket lost its cultural primacy. Basketball became a sexier sport for the young, with the soaring black millionaires of the NBA as role models.

All the same, West Indies won the right to hold the World Cup and would dearly love a great tournament from the home team. Home advantage, the power and nous of Chris Gayle and a few weeks of team spirit from Lara could even make it happen.

But there is no illusion as to what this World Cup is all about. Never mind calypso, never mind reggae. This one takes place to that ineffably tiresome Pink Floyd track, Money. Tourism rules and this tournament is all about the tourist dollar. Where West Indies cricket goes from here, Lord knows. All I can say for certain is that I’ve seen more sporting wonders from those scattered islands than I have from anywhere else in the world.

Rise and fall of West Indies in World Cup

1975 Clive Lloyd’s West Indies beat the Ian Chappell-led Australia in the Lord’s final of the first World Cup by 17 runs
1979 Lloyd’s side return to Lord’s to beat England by 92 runs and win a second title
1983 Kapil Dev’s India shock Lloyd’s team by 43 runs in the third consecutive Lord’s final
1987 Viv Richards’s side fail to reach the semi-finals after two defeats by England and a narrow loss to Pakistan in the group stages
1992 Despite a ten-wicket thrashing of Pakistan they fail to reach the semi-finals after defeats by England, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia in the group stages
1996 Lose to Australia in the semi-final by five runs in Mohali — despite Chanderpaul’s 80 at the top of the innings — bowled out with three balls remaining
1999 Lose to Australia and Pakistan in the group stages to miss out on qualifying for the Super Sixes
2003 Fail to reach the Super Sixes after defeats by Sri Lanka and New Zealand and a costly “no result” against Bangladesh