West Indies cricket – A hopeless case

West Indies Cricket, through its evolution, became glue for regional cooperation and social advancement for the peoples of the Caribbean. However, the baby has been thrown away with the bath water.{{more}}

Its demise was not designed and constructed by any concoction of external forces, but by self-destruction of the very institution which was looked upon as model of integration, which others envied and yearned to emulate.

But we in the region in the last two decades have crafted, with perfection, a certified wrecking crew which has decimated what others have toiled to erect.

Therefore, the regular outbursts and fallouts involving the players, management and the West Indies Cricket Board, to those who have an understanding of the contraption of West Indies cricket, are new in awe.

One would have thought that the walkout of the team on the Indian tour last year October would have been the last of the worst we would have heard of the vagaries of West Indies cricket and its administrative conundrum.

But the suspension of head coach Phil Simmons from the tour of Sri Lanka for comments of “outside interference”, over the non-selection of fellow Trinidadians Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard for the One-Day International team, has added a new episode in the sequel.

Up front, Simmons’ comments lacked statesmanship and integrity of a person in his post, irrespective of his inner feelings of the set-up of West Indies cricket and the internal politics which dictate.

But could it be that Simmons was looking for the easiest way out of what he found himself in?

His pronouncements sounded like a person in distress and regret. However, he is an employee of the WICB and surely such breach of confidentiality of how the vote went on the non-selection of Messrs Bravo and Pollard had no place for public consumption.

What has been borne out in Simmons’ action is the response from the Trinidad and Tobago populace, as the divide and the insularity have become the common denominators among those who have vented their positions on the matter.

This sort of reaction is not new, as three years ago, when Chris Gayle was sidelined for comments made on a radio programme in his native Jamaica, immediately there was the involvement of government personnel, which led to Gayle’s reinstatement.

It was the same Gayle who did not couch his feelings when Bravo and Pollard were not in the team for the Word Cup in South Africa.

Even more recently, top cricket officials from the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board were up in arms with the axing of Trinidadians Denesh Ramdin and Merissa Augillera as captains of the senior men’s and women’s teams, respectively.

Before that, in May, when it was clear that the durable Shivnarine Chanderpaul was no longer part of the team, the Guyana Cricket Board called the action of the selection committee, headed by Guyanese Clive Lloyd, as “ridiculous” and “unfathomable”.

Apart from the insular actions which are often glaring, there is that growing trend of “leaks”, in which information is known before they are made official.

A 12th man in the scheme of developments has been the technological conduits of Twitter, Whatsapp, emails and the likes, which are tools to spread the mistrust and disunity which exist.

President of the WICB Dave Cameron is one of the lead vocalists in this regard, as evidenced by his infamous tweet about Gayle being a candidate for a retirement package. So, from right at the top, no better the beef no better the barrel.

The divide does not only exist among the territorial boards, which then compose the directors of the West Indies Cricket Board.

At the single entity territorial level, Jamaican Marlon Samuels, in a candid interview on Sportsmax in 2013, revealed that within the Jamaica team, there are ‘teams’ within the team.

Nothing is going in the right direction for West Indies cricket, on and off the field, living the once revered champion of Caribbean prowess – a distant dream of resurgence, but a certain occupant of hopelessness.

The administrators are mere self-centred egomaniacs, with the players having no mentors, hence adopting a laissez-faire mentality, resulting in mediocre performances, such that the team is now at lower tier status.

The reality, however, remains that apart from plummeting from the dizzy heights of the 1980s and 1990s, the West Indies and its cricket have emerged as tiny ethers of conflict and confusion.