The accession of Brian Lara is the most memorable example of sulk power since Violet Elizabeth cowed the rascally William Brown into meek submission in the matchless tales of Richmal Crompton.
Lara has flounced into high office. For two years now, in which time his Test average has been 36, he has brooded in his tent while the fortunes of West Indies cricket have fallen into sharp decline.
He is the greatest batsman of his generation but it is sometimes forgotten how heavily his reputation depends on his outstanding deeds of 1994 when, in the space of six weeks, he made the highest scores in Test and first-class cricket, 375 against England and 501 for Warwickshire against Durham.
His motto that year, with apologies to Captain Oates, might have been: "I'm going in. I may be some time." Of his 31 first-class centuries, 14 were scored in that calendar year. But there have been only nine since and he has often appeared more interested in his nine-iron than his cricket bat.
In recent series Shivnarine Chanderpaul has been more dependable and Carl Hooper more brilliant. It is the desperate hope of regenerating Lara's batting, and through it the entire West Indies side, that lies behind his appointment. In the approaching series against England he is probably the one player on either side capable of winning it on his own.
Michael Atherton's England will need no reminding of the pivotal part he played in 1994, when his record-breaking innings in Antigua was probably less relevant than his resistance in the First Test and his 167 in the second, or of his magnificent hundreds at Old Trafford, Nottingham and The Oval in 1995.
Since then, however, and including the recent 3-0 defeat in Pakistan in which he scored 126 runs in six innings, his batting has appeared impatient and unfocused. Making him captain, in the hope that it will revitalise his interest in playing, is awful. But the West Indies Cricket Board deserve some sympathy. When the selectors chose Lara to lead in Pakistan, they vetoed the move. They had serious misgivings, as they have now. But who else is there? Courtney Walsh is finished, as a captain anyway, and Jimmy Adams is not in the side.
Lara, intelligent and a precociously thoughtful leader of Trinidad when only 20, may have it in him to become an outstanding Test captain. But first he has to win over his senior players who respect his batting but little else. Even Viv Richards, not above a little arrogance himself, has doubts about him.
In Trinidad he has an opulent house and enjoys the status of a monarch. This is a country that, unlike Barbados and Jamaica, has produced few great cricketers. Sir Learie Constantine, perhaps, Sonny Ramadhin, possibly, but Lara is bigger and better than anything they have seen before. If he had grown up in Barbados, with the likes of Gary Sobers and Wes Hall to keep an eye on him, humility might have come to him more easily.
Even in Port-of-Spain, that most cosmopolitan and vital of Caribbean towns, there are those who have reservations. "Brian is a very talented, very charming big-headed boy," former Glamorgan and West Indies opener Bryan Davis told me.
In Warwickshire, where they have also recently appointed him captain and given him a vast contract in the hope of concentrating his money-conscious attention, there are similar misgivings.
Publicly, the players are backing Lara but a number of them remain upset about the appointment and in particular the snubbing of the popular Tim Munton, who in their great year of 1994 led them more often than the official captain Dermot Reeve, winning eight games out of nine. Warwickshire, disgracefully, offered Lara the captaincy behind Munton's back.
Privately, too, some Warwickshire players are disappointed that Neil Smith, who has shown greater captaincy potential than the England A skipper Nick Knight, was not given at least the vice-captaincy.
Bob Woolmer, the Warwickshire coach four years ago, said Lara was awkward to handle and clashed with Reeve. "He was inflexible and would often turn up at Edgbaston 10 minutes before a game," he said. Once he even took his mobile phone onto the outfield.
"This time," Lara told me in London three weeks ago, "I want to win more friends and fewer enemies." He will be 29 in May, and there may be a new maturity, but we are still waiting to see it.
If Lara bats as he did four years ago, England will probably lose the series. But England followers who wish him to fail as a captain are guilty of shallow hope because the consequences for the game in the Caribbean could be dire.
The decline in West Indies cricket may be more than cyclical. Money is short and interest in the game, in some islands, is on the wane. Internecine rivalries, never far away but kept in check over 20 years of outstanding success, are on the march again. The situation cries out for a Worrell, Sobers or Lloyd. Instead we have a spoiled man-child who was given the job to make him interested in playing.
