I have to count myself among those who often hear about a track and field performance here, a medal (not gold) won there or a personal best achieved somewhere else and still it fails to register how much effort and dedication is required to remain consistently among the best in the world in a chosen field of endeavour for five or more years.

That’s why it was important to put the “yet again” in that opening line, because Richards’ historic success – the first-ever gold for this nation at the World Indoor Championships – in the 400 metres in Belgrade on Saturday is no fluke, no bolt out of the blue, but another example of this young man’s phenomenal talent and versatility.

He didn’t just get the better of the field, and especially a strong late challenge by American Trevor Bassitt, but did so in a new championship record time of 45 seconds flat.

Maybe it was the memory of his fallen teammate Deon Lendore which provided those few extra drops of vital energy, or maybe it was just his own proven ability to occasionally draw on additional reserves of effort when needed.

Whatever it was, it worked, and the 28-year-old old can now add “World Indoor Champion” to his growing list of honours which include a gold medal at the outdoor World Championships in 2017 as part of the 4×400 relay quartet, bronze in the 200 metres at the same event in London, golds at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast of Australia in 2018 (200 metres) and a year later at the World Relays in the Japanese city of Yokohama (4 x 400).

There are also successes at regional meets and several accomplishments at junior levels which underline the value of identifying these young talents, as at the next Carifta Games in Jamaica over the Easter weekend, and giving them every reasonable opportunity to develop their skills and refine their talents for the benefit of themselves and the country.

Will we ever come to understand that an investment in these talented young men and women, in a proper, well-structured and disciplined programme based on merit, redounds not only to their benefit but the well-being of the nation as more and more see the value of such positive pursuits?

We can but hope.

Speaking of disciplined, it takes a special level of commitment, or maybe it is about just having nothing else to do, to watch most of the ten days’ play of the two men’s cricket Tests so far between the West Indies and England.

At the time of writing this at the tea interval on the final day yesterday in Barbados, the home side were as they were eight days earlier in Antigua: three wickets down for next to nothing and facing the prospect, however slim, of defeat in the final session of the Test after some of the most tedious, uninspiring cricket seen for some time.

But these two matches, and the one to follow in Grenada starting on Thursday, are not really Test matches in the traditional sense where the skills of all are challenged at various levels and at different stages of a protracted contest. No sir, this series is about ensuring the business of an England tour to the Caribbean is phenomenally successful in vacuuming up every pound sterling and pence that the tens of thousands of supporters bring with them.

So it doesn’t really matter if the cricket is dead boring. It doesn’t matter if these unresponsive pitches, these benign surfaces can only make it well-nigh impossible for batsmen with mediocre records to even dream of coping properly in more challenging conditions.

West Indies are due to play two Test matches in Australia at the end of the year, seven years since their last visit there and the shortest campaign since the first of 15 Test series Down Under in 1930. It’s a given that we won’t be scheduled for the prime Test match occasions at Melbourne and Sydney. But wherever we are assigned to play, and given what we see regularly the quality of cricket in Australian conditions, can we even dare to hope for a modicum of competitiveness against the likes of Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood and the guile of Lyon?

This is not about cricket and the welfare of West Indies cricket moving forward. This is simply about business.

When England were here three years ago and were hammered in four days in Barbados and thrashed in three days in Antigua, reclaiming the Wisden Trophy (it’s now the Richards-Botham Trophy) was obviously secondary to days of revenue lost by the West Indies winning too efficiently.

It’s sad that our cricket has shamelessly come to this.