Cricket and Politics! What next?

If we thought the Silly Season couldn’t get sillier, we were certainly mistaken and of course, there is more to come. The longer it takes to ring the Bell the more divided and sillier will the country become, caught up in a deformed Westminster system. At play are two aspects of political play. As I suggested previously; the desire to create more history by giving the ruling regime a sixth continuous term of office; then of course those advocating change. Democracies, as opposed to Dictatorships and Autocracies, opt to prevent any government occupying positions of power for a long time. For one, after holding on to positions of power for too long the occupant gets the feeling of entitlement and ownership. There is the tendency to forget that the real masters of the process were the ones who elected them to office. In small countries like ours with a high level of poverty, a weak private sector, and the government the largest employer the situation is likely to become scandalous, with bribery built into the process so that one fails to see the distinction. The issue of accountability is bypassed because of that sense of ownership. The media, an important watchdog in a democracy leaves much to be desired particularly if it has to depend on government advertisements. We boast of an Education Revolution, to my mind a quaint sort of malapropism. Persons who have passed through that system seemed not to have been exposed to ‘critical thinking’. They mainly see education as a passport to better jobs and are hardly involved in the development of our society as one would have hoped. They should have been making valuable contributions to the National Debate. The public service, in which many of those graduates are employed, allows itself to be totally controlled by those who hold positions of authority. Promotion is often dictated by political labels and affiliations, leaving many dissatisfied workers. Trade unions, with few exceptions, have lost their way and have been moving away from their commitment to workers. Politics, in fact, penetrates every aspect of life in the country as many persons have opted to be on the ‘gravy train’.

This week saw the politization of cricket as never before, a new intrusion into the Silly Season. The sad display of West Indian batting in the tests against Australia provided an opening to make the Silly Season even sillier. It started sometime ago when Vincentian Dr Kishore Shallow, who serves as president of Cricket West Indies, dared to put his name forward as a candidate in the upcoming Vincentian elections. His great sin was that he opted to be on the side of the Opposition. Political thunder began to roll, and the focus of attention was on Shallow. How dare he! Following the successful ceremony honouring surviving members of the West Indian team that won that World Cup in 1975, SVG came up with what it is calling Emancipation Cricket Festival, the biggest thing to be happening for Cricket in the Region, some say. It was of course, more politics than cricket. But the humiliating defeat suffered by the West Indies Cricket Team in its last test with Australia, brought out the demons in SVG. The state of West Indian Cricket became an issue and Shallow was to blame. They were out for his ‘blood’. The fact that since the 1990s the state of West Indian Cricket has been of concern mattered little. What mattered was that little black boy from North Leeward who was president of Cricket West Indies. It informed political talk, with some politically blinded persons calling for his resignation as if Cricket West Indies was a one-man show, like politics in some countries.