Time to question the great Clive Lloyd

Jan 22, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In all the decades that I have been doing commentaries I have never hesitated even for a split second to pen a critically negative comment on either an international, Caribbean or Guyanese icon. I am even more eager to do it because as people who have achieved adulation and respect for their endeavors, they ought to act as examples to the world at all times.
In recent times, I asked a question of Sir Shridath Ramphal. He contributed a panegyric to President Bharrat Jagdeo’s Day of Appreciation and so I wondered in one of my columns why three years ago, after retiring from international duties, he chose to settle in one of the most populated pieces of land on Planet Earth, Barbados and not Guyana.
I commented most sarcastically on a man who was awarded the Order of Excellence, Dr. Compton Bourne, when he was Chancellor of UG. I sat next to this man for three years and saw him administer policies at UG and he is a stranger to the process of professional conduct and fairness.
I have no respect and will have none in the future for Dr. David Dabydeen. I don’t think I will ever in the future say a nice word about Rickey Singh. Sir Shridath, Compton Bourne, David Dabydeen and Rickey Singh will probably say to themselves who gives a damn what some Guyanese nonentity says about them.
That is their right. I reserve my right to say what I think needs to be said. Remember the famous saying; “A man has got to do what a man has got to do.”
There are great Guyanese I have criticized and in the end, I remained committed in my view that they are great. I can think of the late David De Caires. We had our quarrels, David had his flaws (God knows I have too many) but David was a superb man and a fair-minded one.
I have penned a few critical remarks on the politics of Clive Thomas but he remains a Guyanese hero. I had running disagreements with Tacuma Ogunseye but I will always see him as fantastic contributor to Guyanese liberation.
I now come to the cricket icon, Clive Lloyd. I have done several pieces on the imbroglio between the Guyana Government, its invention of an IMC headed by Mr. Lloyd and the Guyana Cricket Board. In all the analyses, I did not take a position of support for the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB). I don’t know what has played out in the boardroom the past umpteen years and I am not going to push my mouth in that.
My contestation remains the same – the Guyana Government, seeing that there was turmoil in the administration of cricket sought to control it by using bullying tactics. Their answer was the IMC. Enter Clive Lloyd.
I am no big cricket fan but I am aware of the international legacy of Lloyd and it is for that reason I think Lloyd should have thought long and hard before getting involved in a process that could jeopardize his international standing. I guess that when he was called in to work with the Government, he must have been told that there were huge problems with the GCB.
But Lloyd had to know that the international administrators of football and cricket see red when Governments get involved with these two sports.
To date, Lloyd and his patrons have not showed this nation proof of financial irregularities in the GCB despite seizing documents from the GCB and from the individual homes of its Board members.
Against this background how can Lloyd avoid the accusation that the IMC was a conspiracy to take over cricket administration?
Lloyd should have asked himself why the Government has not acted with similar supersonic speed in creating an IMC for football. I will answer that by saying that Lloyd knows the disaster that would have followed.
Why didn’t Lloyd use his international contacts to secure resolutions without governmental interference? There are thousands of well-intentioned cricket experts in the world that would have helped. Look at how foreign football officials mediated and succeed in the quarrel in local football.
Another road missed by Clive Lloyd is that as the head of the IMC he should have sought a role for wider stakeholders’ participation, including opposition parties. Lloyd must be aware that in Guyana once the Government does something the opposition is suspicious, and vice versa. But Lloyd chose to embrace with the mandate given to him by the creators of the IMC.
I can’t help but advising this once great cricketer to stick to sports and stay far from Guyanese politics.

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