WHAT A JOKE!

Jan 28, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Having failed to establish that there is a crisis in local cricket, the government is not attempting to create one. The latest move of the government-imposed IMC of naming its own national team is an attempt to bring the players on its side.
So far public opinion has not been swayed by the government’s insistence that cricket needed executive intervention. The GCB has done an excellent job in countering the spin doctors that were trying to establish that the government had no choice but to impose its will on the administration of cricket because of a lack of accountability and other problems.
There is no problem in the administration of cricket and despite not making the semi-finals of the regional 20 completion, our cricketers showed that the problems off the field were not affecting their own performance. They did very well but lost one major match by too large a margin and placed great pressure on themselves.
The players must not allow themselves to be used as pawns by the government and the IMC. The players must not allow themselves to be divided because this is what the government is attempting to do.
The government has failed to have its own way despite behaving like a dockyard bully when it padlocked the offices of the Guyana Cricket Board. And given the failure to have the West Indies Cricket Board acknowledge the Interim Management Committee as the representative body for cricket in Guyana, it is now resorting to using the players to create a crisis in local cricket.
How bitterly ironic that a government which used the pretext of an alleged crisis in cricket to seek to take over the control of the administration of the game, should find itself in a position where it has to engineer a crisis in order create the crisis that it says exists. What a shame and disgrace that the government has to resort to such divisive tactics when it should simply set aside and allow the cricket administrators to settle their differences.
The players are not going to be wooed by the IMC. They have read carefully what the West Indies Cricket Board has said. The ECB has made it clear in no uncertain terms that it recognizes the GCB and will not accept any other team to represent Guyana. The players therefore have no choice other than to not become involved in anything that the IMC organizes.
The risk now is that no matches are likely to be played in Guyana because the WICB may not want to risk bringing a team to Guyana, only to find that the government, as it has threatened to do, withdraws the use of the national stadium.
The other implication for local cricket is that if there are no local matches the GCB can be starved of funds since it is the hosting of these matches that will allow it to earn gate receipts. However, given that we are dealing with a four-day regional competition which hardly attracts large crowds, this loss is not going to be significant.
What is of greater significance is that Guyana will lose face in the eyes of the region and all because the government insists that it has right to take over cricket because it feels it can do so.
All praise must be given to the officials of the Guyana Cricket Board who are the only ones’ displaying any responsible stance in this situation and are prepared to do all that is possible to save the game from this fascist takeover of its administration.
The government has no role in the administering of cricket. Its role should be to support those administering cricket by assisting with infrastructural development.
But that role became blurred from as early as last year when no less a figure that the chief executive of the country decided to be part of a picketing exercise outside of the national stadium because Shivnarine Chanderpaul was not playing.
Can you imagine any other Head of State in the world engaging in a picketing exercise while holding such a powerful office? This is the level of embarrassment to which this country’s people have to subject themselves.
And is now this comical attempt by the IMC to name its own cricket team. What a joke! Guyana: One people, one nation, one destiny; two national cricket teams!

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WHAT A JOKE!

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