Well, here we go again. It's time to learn.
I hate learning. In the wider educational sense, I understand it has its benefits. The pen being mightier than the sword and all that. But in a cricket context, it is code for low-stakes cricket.
This was true for the ODI series, where a sub-strength England took on a West Indies side who hadn't qualified for the Champions Trophy and duly took their beating. But it shouldn't have been the case for the T20 series, where the West Indies are a cohesive, exciting cricket team taking on an England side boosted by the return of a white-ball genius in Jos Buttler and sporting young talents like Jacob Bethell. This was set to be a lot of fun.
But forget Phil Salt and Akeal Hosein for a second. Because the fundamental takeaway from this series is an administrative one. Don't mess with timings. The 4pm starts, designed to better suit a UK TV audience, were a disaster, creating a double disadvantage for the team batting first, with the wickets being at their worst under the afternoon sun, before dew settles in the evening making the pitch good for batting and the ball slippery for bowling. No team won a match on this tour after losing the toss.
After the deciding ODI, Liam Livingstone said he'd never played a match where conditions had altered so much from one innings to the next. "It's no excuse," he said to remain professional. "But even if we'd got 350 I don't think it'd have been enough," he added to say what he really meant.
West Indies T20I captain Rovman Powell was consistent on the issue throughout. After losing the first match of the series, he said, "the best case is for the games to start at 7pm. When we looked at the schedule and realised it would start at 4pm, we knew that would be a problem."
And then after the coin fell his way and his team won the fourth match: "It's one of the first times I've seen in the Caribbean that once you win the toss, you win the game. It's too skewed."
We all get it. Cricket bends to the will of the broadcaster. These are shows designed for those on the sofa at home, not for those in attendance at the ground - and that is true across sports and has been the case for a long time. The ultimate example of this is US car manufacturer Chevrolet's sponsorship of Manchester United. From 2012 to 2019, they spent $559m for their logo to be on the front of United's shirt. Chevrolet doesn't sell cars in the UK.
The argument goes that this is where the money comes from. Cricket needs cash and so it is better to have a few thousand fewer people in the ground with an inconvenient start time, but with more money gained as a result from the broadcast rights being of a greater value.
As a matter of opinion, that argument is short-sighted. Because the TV product you're selling will lose value over time if every time people turn on the TV they see empty stands. Keep selling a crappy product and those TV rights will drop in value. And then eventually you're left with no one watching in the crowd and no one watching at home either.
But as a matter of fact, shifting times cannot impact the integrity of the result. That is ludicrous and devalues the sport.
In every T20I match across the series, the stands started off empty and then gradually filled as the match ebbed into the times that they should have originally been starting. By the end of Saturday's match at Kensington Oval, there was a superb atmosphere supporting what was a genuinely excellent sporting event and then even in the seemingly sparsely attended fourth T20I in St Lucia, when the West Indies chase got going later in the atmosphere was excellent.
At risk of labouring the point. There is a genuine desire and enjoyment of cricket in the Caribbean. Put it at a time when locals can watch and stop playing Sweet Caroline. We're not at Edgbaston. If then it fails. Fine. But give it a chance. Don't, as happened here, put it at a time where the main event took place thirty minutes before a ball was bowled.
For what it's worth, we did have one match where the toss wasn't set to be the be-all and end-all. Ahead of the fifth T20I, Sherfane Rutherford said he reckoned on this occasion, because of how good the pitch was after it had been baked by three days of sun, that the toss shouldn't matter. And then it rained. Good stuff.
The lopsided nature of the contest also framed how much the teams could really learn themselves. West Indies are searching for greater depth in bowling, but spent three matches having to defend inadequate totals because they'd lost the toss. That doesn't help anyone. England, blessed with playing in favourable conditions, were excellent. You can't blame a team for making the most of their opportunity. Saqib Mahmood, in particular, was superb, Bethell is worth the hype, Buttler is back with a smile on his face, Salt is superb against the West Indies and Jamie Overton could be anything. But in the one game England had to bowl second, West Indies were 136 for one in nine overs.
At the end of it all, England posed with the T20 trophy in the pavilion at the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground as the rain fell outside. Bethell is in the middle, holding the cup. And if you zoom in close enough, you can see it engraved with West Indies vs England T20 Series 2024: The Caveat Cup.