THE backlash against John Dyson around the West Indies was swift and merciless yesterday. “WI Lose to Dyson” ran a headline in Barbados’s Nation; caribbeancricket.com was full of posts from fans venting their spleen against the foreign coach whose misinterpretation of the Duckworth-Lewis tables handed England victory in the first one-day international. “John Die-soon”, one dubbed him.

Dyson was quick to admit that the error — telling his batsmen to come off for bad light, when the dismissal of Denesh Ramdin had just put his side one run behind the required rate — was all his. “I’ve apologised to the team, that’s all I can do,” he said.

Well, not quite. He could have apologised to the 15,000 spectators at the Providence stadium in Guyana whose interests he disregarded by seeking to stop the game while he believed his team were ahead. As captain Chris Gayle conceded, had they known they were behind, West Indies would have batted on. The decision to accept an offer of bad light was pure opportunism. Win at all costs and damn the punters.

Dyson: the man with a chart but no heart. Thanks, John, but if you’re interested in the England coaching job, we sincerely hope English cricket is not interested in you. Dyson’s chances were already slim. Now they are nil.

His ingrained negativity is the last thing this England team need; they are naturally cautious enough. In his time as coach with Sri Lanka and West Indies, not to mention as a crabby opening bat for Australia, Dyson has shown himself oblivious to cricket as entertainment.

Much of the cricket in the recent Tests was excruciating, thanks to the home side’s determination to defend a 1-0 lead at all costs. Maybe the cynicism does not matter as long as Dyson helps West Indies return to winning ways. He may reckon his approach will be enough to secure a new contract when the present one expires next year.

If Friday’s denouement in the dark did not reflect well on Dyson, nor did it do much for the match officials, whose insistence that the match remained a 50-over affair even after a 45-minute rain delay made it almost inevitable that dusk would arrive before the end of a full game.

It is not as though we have not been here before many times, most recently when England played an ODI in Kanpur in November. The umpires are supposed to apply common sense in such situations, but the sensible thing on Friday would have been at least to finish the 47th over, rather than offering the light to the batsmen after the fall of a wicket to the second ball.

Both sets of players are also culpable. Before the series they rejected the option of switching on floodlights when necessary. Why? To shorten their working days? This is a decision that should not be left to them. The International Cricket Council should agree that lights must be switched on should the need arise. Nothing has been learnt on a PR front from the fiasco of the last World Cup final.

That said, England deserved their first win of the winter for application, effort and refusal to give up even as nerves jangled. Stuart Broad and James Anderson shared five wickets, and three good catches were held in the last seven overs as pressure was applied.

West Indian errors at the business end of the game were symptomatic of the trouble in their camp. Perhaps if Gayle had not been sulking about the dispute with his board, he would have shown more interest in what Dyson’s clipboard was telling him. His conduct did not escape censure from supporters yesterday.

Once more, the competence of the West Indies board is at issue. The grievances of the players are several: their representative, Dinanath Ramnarine, says the board has not kept its deal over payments to regional cricketers and to the international team during its tour of New Zealand.

But Ramnarine’s decision to quit his seat on the West Indies board was largely self-serving. During the New Zealand tour he set up, with the players’ blessing, the West Indies Players’ Management Company, of which he is the sole director. This makes him the players’ agent, and he thereby stands to gain from their involvement in the Indian Premier League (IPL).

The crux of the dispute is Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Fidel Edwards and Jerome Taylor being allowed to miss the tour of England in May to play a full season of the IPL, an issue that may be resolved if the tournament is cancelled for security reasons.