Penalise those found in breach of standard regulations

Feb 17, 2009 Sports

By Rawle Welch
You know the more you think about the tragedy that occurred last Friday at the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket ground, the more you’re inclined to support the view that those who’re responsible for the calamity must be punished.

I think every cricket fan whether you’re West Indian, English, Australian or even Pakistani must have felt totally gutted and devastated by what took place at the stadium named after one of the greatest batsman to ever play the game.

With the series set up so magnificently after the hosts romped to a surprisingly easy win, against a team ranked higher than them, in the opening test in Jamaica, cricket lovers the world over must have eagerly awaited the start of the second match to see whether the triumph was a genuine revival of the West Indies team or if it was one of those mirages that we had witnessed from time to time over the past ten years.

The English who perhaps were still in a state of disbelief after their dreadful performance in the opening game must have felt pressured coming into the match, while the West Indies players buoyed by their early success would have been eager to show the cricketing world that the win was no stroke of luck, but that they had turned the corner.

Well, instead, what we saw after ten balls were bowled could only have helped the Englishmen since it allowed them more time to get adjusted to the tropical Caribbean conditions as well as sufficient time to heal the wounds that were inflicted by the first test defeat.

On the contrary, the West Indian team must have lost some of the momentum they gained as well as they more than their opponents would have also suffered from the indignity of witnessing such an embarrassing situation in the West Indies.

There is no way that that episode would not have affected them mentally, the full extent of which we will know in the coming matches.

President of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) Dr. Julian Hunte speaking shortly after the match was abandoned declared that “the show must go on”, but the question that everyone is asking is who will take the blame for the disaster that happened after only 14 minutes and 1.4 overs were possible, before play was aborted.

The English visitors, numbered in the vicinity of 8,000 paid their hard earned cash to come to Antigua and clearly dominated the paying patrons in the ground and from some of the reports presented, it seemed as though their presence was the principal factor that kept the game on the island.

Hunte told the media that the WICB Operations Department worked closely with the Antiguan authorities to get the ground ready and while Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer has gotten personally involved and ordered a probe, members of the Board who were responsible for checking the suitability of the ground to play the match should also come under the microscope and feel the full brunt of the investigation, if culpability is proven.

We’ve since learned that “crucial inspections never took place,” and that means that the officials failed to check the ground’s capability of staging the match bearing in mind that no first class game was played there prior to the Test which is normally the case.

Therefore, it leaves only the WICB to absorb the blame and it would indeed be interesting to see how the matter unfolds in the coming weeks.

The probe by the Prime Minister must point to where the breakdown started, what or who caused it and recommendations for the future.

Those found in breach of the standard regulations should be penalised because it caused a great shame to the Caribbean, the likes of which we should never allow to happen again.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News