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Cricket Criminals

Jun 20, 2010 Editorial

For several years, we have been highlighting the culpability of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) in the precipitous decline of our once fabled cricketing dynasty. Like most forlorn fans, we questioned the bona fides of the board mostly from the standpoint of their suitability (or patent unsuitability) in resuscitating our cricketing fortunes.
Allegations of financial improprieties would crop up from time to time but since these were mostly confined to board executives living high off the hog, even as they dug in their heels over players’ compensation, they drifted off the radar in the absence of evidence of endemic venality. And again, the quantum of pilferage was not of such as to maintain sustained outrage, even as it exposed some administrators as infected with the mentality of grifters – small time hustlers.
But it should have alerted us to the possibility that the mediocrity of our recent cricket performances might have been directly linked to the limited horizons of grifters. If only one-hundredth of the accusations being hurled back and forth among the principals in the ongoing IPL saga prove to be true, we can at least appreciate what hustlers with a vision can achieve. For good, bad or indifferent we had to be stuck with grifters.
But as with everything else, the field of hustling is relative: for poorer societies it does not take much to attract those ever alert to the opportunities for making an easy buck. If in India’s IPL we’re talking about billions, at the West Indian level, a million provides the equivalent motivation. And since we’re talking about US dollars, when we translate that to the Guyanese level, we have the possibility of cricket administrators being seduced to the dark side for maybe a hundred thousand US dollars – which translates to the princely sum of 20 million Guyana dollars.
And this, of course, brings us to the sordid but tragic local cricket administration tale (and make no mistake about it, it is all about our cricketing administration) where Mr Pretipaul Jaigobin, assistant Treasurer of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) was doused with acid. As the V.P. of the GCB pithily stated, “There is no doubt in my mind” that the attack was linked to Mr Jaigobin’s consistent identification and criticism of “issues of mal-administration, nepotism, cronyism, illegalities and financial improprieties” on the GCB. Imagine instigating the possible blinding of a colleague – not to mention his permanent facial and bodily scarring – for, at most, a hundred thousand (US) dollars. Can we honestly be surprised that with such men at the helm of our cricket, we in Guyana are the lowest of the West Indian low?
We are very pleased that the Minister of Sports and Culture initiated what we hope was only a preliminary Inquiry into the miasma of the GCB. He has to go further and ensure that this Aegean Stable be cleaned forthwith or else we will witness another two decades of wallowing in the pits of second-rate cricket. No to mention periodic eruptions of miasma.
Cricket is not the private property of a few incestuous grifters: cricket is the property of the people, supported extensively by the state.
Our taxes fund cricket in the schools; the cricket grounds in most rural communities (especially those in the sugar belt) and the national stadium at Providence. On more that one occasion we have had to point out the commitment this government demonstrated to cricket when, against the criticisms of the naysayers, it secured the loan and oversaw the construction of the Cricket Stadium in time for World Cup 2007.
We are not advocating that the government or its officials become entrenched in the administration of cricket – but to insist that they have to use the opportunity provided by the criminal attack on Mr Jaigobin, to rid our cricket of the criminals that have destroyed its morale. These grifters will always put their own interest in front of the game and since these interests are so petty (in addition to being fraudulent) they will only redound to the detriment of the game.
Our youths deserve better; our cricket fans deserve better; indeed, cricket deserves better.

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