THE West Indies' criticism over the poor condition of the wicket at the National Sports Centre was justified according to one of the island's top cricket umpires, Randy Butler,

Voicing their disapproval of the wicket were West Indies manager Tony Howard and long-serving key Test players such as vice-captain Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine Chanderpaul.

Howard said that the rather dusty strip was not conducive to one-day cricket while Sarwan reckoned that it was probably the worst wicket he had seen.

"I'm not surprised to hear those comments at all ? it played badly during the Lloyd's Cricket Club tour and players also criticised it during the Americas Cup tournament. Something definitely has to be done soon to correct this problem," said Butler.

"You can look at it and see it wasn't the type of pitch they are used to playing on. Sarwan told me this before the start of the first game. Then Chanderpaul said that he has played on something that poor in Trinidad ? he admitted that you had to play cautiously and watch the ball to score any runs."

According to Butler, a lot of other pitches in Bermuda are far better because the clay is more binding and you get a harder pitch since the ball comes to you but at the NSC it's like soil on top of the clay and it breaks up.

He reckons that they must have topped-dressed it with soil and hoped that it would blend with the grass but that's not good.

Butler said that whatever work was done it didn't turn out too well as witnessed by the end result.

"Privately some of the players told me that Bermuda must dig up the entire wicket and get some decent clay and soil in order to attract the big international games and be successful.

"As things stand now the ball is coming through uneven and doing a lot of stuff ? for Sluggo to take six wickets for just a few runs like he did against Lloyd's Cricket Club just their tour this summer clearly showed you how the way the ball was biting.

"But if the ball was coming off the pitch easy he would not have gotten all of those wicket that easy.

"It's very deceiving to a batsman. Look at that first game between the West Indies and Barbados ? both team were struggling to score runs. The West Indies bowler Ian Bradshaw looked like Bermuda's Clarence Parfitt on that wicket ? the minute you tried to play a shot the ball was moving away and a catch was taken in the gully.

"At Somerset the ball was coming off just like they (batsmen) liked it and they hit the ball real clean. There was a noticeable difference in the condition of the wicket."

Butler doesn't know the answer but he pointed out that a solution must be found or Bermuda's reputation to host big games in the future will indeed suffer as a consequence.