Similar but different! Is Lloyd being manipulated or just getting old?

Jan 14, 2015 Sports

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Asks Sean Devers
One cannot help wondering if the once highly respected former West Indies Captain Clive Lloyd is being manipulated by the WICB or just getting old.

The recent utterances and questionable selections by the 70 year-old Guyanese are strange to say the least and his credibility is decreasing as fast as honesty, integrity and professionalism are declining in Guyana.
One wonders how Lloyd came to the conclusion that Jason Holder, who he recommended to replace One-Day Captain Dwayne Bravo less than two months ahead of the World Cup, would make a good Captain when he has never seen Holder, (talented but inexperienced), lead any team at any level.
The decision seems more perplexing since Test Captain Denish Ramdin, one of only four players in the team with more than 100 ODIs, is an automatic pick in the limited overs side. Last year, Lloyd claimed that West Indies will do well at Test level in the future from what he had seen in the 2014 Regional Under-19 series which was won by host Guyana.

This was one of the worst Under-19 tournaments in terms of the standard and temperament of the players and I have seen almost every regional youth tournament since 1985. His comments came in the wake the WICB deciding to reduce the three-day tournament from five to three matches. The limited overs tournament could have been quashed if funding was a problem since no Under-19 World Cup is fixed for this year.
Is this how Lloyd sees the future players improving Test cricket when they are not being taught to bat for long periods and two-innings cricket being reduced? It is understood that if Richard Pybus, the former Pakistan and Bangladesh Coach, who was appointed West Indies’ Director of Cricket got his way there would be no Three-Day youth tournaments.
Pybus will provide cricketing expertise to help develop West Indies’ regional and international cricketers, over a three-year period starting November 1, 2014. Lloyd, who was paid a lucrative sum by the Guyana Government to head the IMC which was supposed to deal with the problems involving the Guyana Cricket Board did very little to fix the problems Guyana’s cricket faced and soon moved to the opposing camp when he accepted the position of Chairman of the WICB Selectors.
Since replacing fellow Guyanese Clyde Butts in the position Lloyd’s questionable selections have been filled with controversy. Leaving out two of the team’s best One-Day players (Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard) from the World Cup squad and not picking Leon Johnson, the most talented of the new batsmen for next month’s ICC showpiece event fuels speculation that their omissions have little to do with their performances on the field but more about politics and what transpired on the aborted tour of India.
The omission of Pollard and Dwayne Bravo is threatening to disintegrate further, an already uncomfortable Caribbean set-up. In-form opener Chris Gayle slammed the team’s selection saying it was “ridiculous” to axe two of West Indies most explosive players”.
”How can those two guys not be in the team? To me, it got to be like victimisation when you look at it towards those two guys. Come on, guys. It is just ridiculous,” Gayle said.
Due to pay disputes, Bravo had led a ‘Players revolt’ during the team’s tour of India last year. West Indies pulled out of the India series in dramatic fashion that soured the relationship between the Indian and West Indian cricket boards.
This was the same Lloyd that led a West Indies team to the Kerry Packer Super Test series in Australia in defiance of the WICB resulting in the players who participated being banned by their Board and a second string team, led by Alvin Kallicharran, sent to India.
World Series Cricket (WSC) was a ‘break-away’ professional cricket competition staged between 1977 and 1979 and organised by Packer for his Australian television network, Channel Nine.
The widespread view that players were not paid sufficient amounts to make a living from cricket was one of the many reasons for the formation of the Packer series. Packer set up his own series by secretly signing agreements with leading Australian, English, Pakistani, South African and West Indian players, most notably England captain Tony Greig,
West Indies captain Clive Lloyd, Australian captain Greg Chappell, future Pakistani captain Imran Khan and former Australian Captain Ian Chappell. When the West Indians were offered contracts that would pay them more than they could earn in an entire career, they all signed with alacrity.
The ACB opted to not select WSC-contracted players for the 1979 World Cup and produced sub-standard Australian performances but the WICB overturned the ban on their players since, picking the best team for the 1979 World Cup was of primary importance to the Board and the people of the West Indies.
Lloyd, the only captain to lead his team to three consecutive World Cup Finals; winning the first two, was reinstated as captain. However, this time round, the WICB which seems not to care about picking its best possible team or about the real stakeholders of West Indies cricket (the people of the Caribbean) has decided to leave out Bravo, Pollard and Johnson.
WICB President Dave Cameron claimed that there was no victimization of the players adding that the players were not picked due their performance with Lloyd and his fellow selectors deciding they were not good enough to merit selection. However both Darren Sammy and Andre Russell have similar averages to Pollard and Bravo yet they were both selected.
Very few West Indians would believe such a story and if it happens to be true then it’s another indictment on Lloyd’s once untarnished reputation for judging players. It would be no surprise if Lloyd recommends that Ramdin be replaced as Test Skipper by Kraigg Braithwaite after the World Cup.
I am not suggesting that the players who aborted the Indian tour are not punished but the Board must publicly explain why Pollard, Bravo and even Johnson were not selected.
The actions of the West Indies Board suggests it’s a run-away train, answerable to no one and it must be stopped before it further destroys the one thing that, despite the generally poor performances of the team, unites West Indian people more than anything else.

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