Killing W.I. Cricket

Jul 17, 2009 Editorial

The present impasse between the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) that has led to a strike by the senior players and the recruitment of a second-string team to face Bangladesh has the potential of sounding the death knell of West Indies cricket.
This state of affairs has been long in coming, so that it ought not to be of any great surprise to the constituency that has suffered most in its painful unfolding – the W.I. fans.
The fall of West Indies cricket from its glory days when it stood on top of the cricketing world by not conceding a Test series defeat between 1980 and 1995 was swift and ignominious. As we have pointed out on several occasions in this space, the primary cause of our downfall was, and continues to be, the obdurate refusal of the WICB to transmute itself into an organisation that can deal effectively with the demands of the modern game.
While the W.I. teams were on top of the heap through a happy confluence of a stream of extraordinarily talented players and inspirational captains, the other cricketing nations – led by the Australians – were not sitting still.
Their boards instituted a series of innovations that were all geared into transforming their game from what had hitherto been an amateur game into a hard-nosed, gritty professional one. Cricketing academies, identification and grooming of talented players, contracts for first-class players, media-funding, endorsements were only the tip of the iceberg of change.
The seismic move was their recognition and treatment of players as professionals. And this was the area in which the WICB has dug in its heels and refused to budge. The West Indies Board still treats its players as if they are peons from the canefields that should be eternally grateful to be allowed (by the WICB) to don a maroon cap and share the clubhouse with them (after respectfully doffing the said cap, of course).
They have stood still as other sports, such as football, entered the islands and began to attract some of the better natural athletes. Finally, even cricket has changed, where players can now count on lucrative contracts – far in excess of what the WICB doles out – by opting to enter the 20/20 free market.
The details precipitating the present crisis are not of great import – it is the relationship between the players and the board that has to be restructured. And this can only come about with a restructuring of the WICB. Over two years ago, after great agitation in all sections of West Indian society, a “Governance Committee on West Indies Cricket” (GCWI), led by former Prime Minister of Jamaica PJ Patterson, was constituted by the WICB to come up with recommendations to resuscitate the game. They duly presented their findings to the board – a 134-page extremely nuanced document that touched on all the key shortcomings of cricket in the Caribbean.
Right up front, the Committee asserted that the WICB had to be scrapped and literally reconstructed. They proposed a two-tiered Cricket West Indies (CWI) comprised of a 23-member Cricket West Indies Council (CWIC) drawn from a wide range of stakeholders and a Cricket West Indies Board (CWIB) selected by the CWIC, the territorial boards, WIPA and Caricom.
The intent was to open up the composition of the governance body to make it more responsive to the needs of the game.
The WICB not surprisingly essentially rejected the report by extraordinarily claiming that it was not detailed enough! Its president, Julian Hunte, claimed that it would put forward its own five-year plan that would incorporate aspects of the Committee’s recommendations. Also, not surprisingly, the WICB has continued with the “same ole same ole” and brought West Indies Cricket to its present death rattle. The WIPA has now requested the assistance of Caricom, through its president, Bharrat Jagdeo.
President Jagdeo does not have to go far for a remedy – not just for breaking the present logjam, but for resolving the structural barriers that is killing our cricket: simply implement the Report of the GCWI.

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