“Let’s do it like Barack – Enhance sport and state!”

Feb 26, 2012 Sports

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Colin E. H. Croft

 

“Pistols? At twenty paces?”  That is how Looney Tunes’ Bugs Bunny, my favorite cartoon character, with suave wickedness and French accent, would have addressed the continued sniping and outright fighting between West Indies Cricket Board and so many Caribbean political entities.  Nothing is funny here!
While they may have taken a short break for Mashramani, the duel between WICB and Guyana still simmers.  Trinidad & Tobago, even in carnival season, were also involved in verbal conflicts over cricket.
Now, like the beacon light from that old light-house in Georgetown which warned mariners of pending dangers, words are flying back and forth between Jamaica Government and Cricket Board, and WICB.
Some real beacon – states-person, that is – must take this in hand, immediately, to try to stop egos running us aground, destroying what is left of our only past uniting unit, West Indies cricket.  Are we so self-centered that we cannot see that there is not much left to push WI cricket over that edge?
Caribbean politics and sports need more listening and less noise.  Step back, take stock then make definite forward decisions.  What of that Treaty of Chaguaramas, signed in 1973, establishing Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM)?  No-one hears anything in this tremendous, useless din!
As former United Nations Chief Kofi Annan sets off to his new sojourn to Syria, one of our own Caribbean statesmen, former Prime Minister P. J. Patterson, could be our light.  Yes, he is Jamaican, from People’s National Party, and Ms Portia Simpson-Miller was his deputy.  ‘PJ’ is much bigger than that!
Percival James Patterson was responsible for that almost always shelved manifesto for better West Indies cricket – The Patterson Report – commissioned eons ago.  He is also the best political leader the Caribbean has had in the last twenty years.  Notice how similar – like real-life twins – PJ and KA look?
Consider Carnival 2012 triple-crown winner Machel Montano to add sports to proposed Cultural Ambassador responsibilities.  After all, he, cricketer Brian Lara and footballer Dwight Yorke, the latter two T&T’s Sporting Ambassadors, are great friends, and they know about winning, and wining too!
Brian McFarlane, another multi-carnival winner, and those three, could ‘pump the flags’ of our region and our only collective representative sport.  West Indies cricket is suffering so badly that any help would be gladly accepted.  It certainly needs ‘sanctification’ for us to emerge from continued debris!
How did we get here?  How did sports and politics become so inextricably entwined, and so especially unfriendly, that barbs fly like explosive-laden drones, not to illuminate the horizon, but to rain abuse and pain?  Where exactly is that most useless of Caribbean organizations, CARICOM, in all this anyway?
It has not always been this way.  When the Caribbean had real visionary leaders; musical, political and sports; not just position holders, the entity survived, despite teething problems of independence.  Even with the eventual failure of the Federation back in 1962, we still knew we could depend on each other!
When I started playing Test cricket in 1976/77, Caribbean political and cultural leaders were always in our dressing rooms.  That was where the real action was.  With the friendships, down-to-earth mannerisms, respect and communications we shared, our cricket teams then had to represent well!
Strangely, along with the ubiquitous two representatives from each territory, WICB back then only had four people running everything; president, secretary, treasurer and team manager.  That we won so very often and well may have been a miracle, Devine intervention, or a plan, but that equation worked!
Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh, of Wailers, and Michael Manley, ‘one of the most outstanding political figures in post-colonial history of the Caribbean’, were always in our changing room at Sabina Park, and elsewhere.  In my fifth Test, first in Jamaica, they all had lunch with us, every day!
Straining all sinews, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner and I, all bowling real fast, had dismissed a gallant Pakistan, West Indies thus winning the series 2-1.  One statement made directly to me by Michael Manley will live forever:  “Rahtid Craftie!  Yuh bowlin’ stones, man!  Nobody can get yuh balls; blood!”
Another aviator, Barbados’ Sir Errol “Chief” Barrow, was even more astute.  He made sure that any ‘official’ trips he had to make to Australia and United Kingdom somehow coincided with West Indies tours there.  He spent many a day with us in Melbourne, Sydney, London and Nottingham!
Perhaps the least sporting of the political geniuses that we produced in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Trinidad & Tobago’s Dr. Eric Williams, also had direct input into our cricket.  His brother, Tony Williams, was a renowned sports journalist in T&T.  I actually met Dr. Williams, for the first time, at Queens Park Oval!
Even as recently as last decade, early 2000’s, Grenada’s Dr. Keith Mitchell, when also Chairman of Prime Ministers’ Committee for Sports, always invited his Caribbean counterparts to St. Georges, or had them host meetings in their respective counties, just so they could witness West indies play Tests and ODI’s!
What has happened to this Caribbean?  How did we get to where Prime Ministers and Presidents literally shout at the main cricketing governing body in the archipelago, WICB, and they shout back?  Where is that respect, that camaraderie, which existed when West Indies dominated world cricket?
Fast forward to last Thursday, just before USA National Basketball Association’s All-star weekend in Orlando, to observe real leadership, statesmanship, and serious sporting fun too, at work.  NBA suffered a debilitating lock-out earlier this season, yet 2012 has been bumper, in many ways, for pro-basketball!
US President Barack Obama, an avowed basketball junkie, addressing a select seventy-five at a US$30,000-a-plate dinner at the home of Dallas Mavericks’ guard, Vince Carter, admitted; “I do not know what I would have done with myself if I, at least, did not have some basketball games around to look at!”
With USA elections on later this year, Barack needs every penny he could muster to fight off the Republicans.  This fund-raiser, which included former Los Angeles Lakers star Earvin “Magic” Johnson, former Miami Heat star Alonzo Morning and Chris Paul of Los Angeles Clippers, fitted the bill perfectly.
‘Renegade’ – that’s US Secret Service’s code name for Barack – continued:  “I am here to tell them, (Republicans), that they are wrong about America.  Because, in America, we understand; yes, we are rugged individuals.  Yes, we do not expect a handout.  But we also understand that we are greater together than we are on our own!”  Can Obama be POTC too, please?  That might just help us!  Maybe!
Caribbean people copy everything American.  Since Barack is up-to-date, without interfering, in all sports, especially basketball, we can listen and learn something extremely useful.
Ironically, this type of vision is not foreign.  Many of our past leaders; Williams, Barrow, Manley, even Burnham, had it too!
No sports team has more nationality stamped into it than Americans.  Come London 2012 Olympics, USA’s National Broadcasting Corporation, (NBC), will exalt which American was 17th or so in the marathon, while forgetting who had won!  It might not always make sense, but that’s national pride!
West Indies sports and politics need such pride.  Maybe Bugs Bunny’s original idea is correct!  Enjoy!

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