The Guyana Cricket Board has made a rational choice

Mar 06, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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It has taken some time, but finally it has happened. Someone has had the testicular fortitude to come out and say that the entire West Indian cricket team should have been fired for withdrawing from the tour of India.
The Prime Minister of St. Lucia, Dr. Kenny Anthony, has said what none of his other colleagues have said. He has come out and given the proper legal response to the dilemma of the West Indies Cricket team abandoning the tour of India.
I am on the same page with the St. Lucian Prime Minister on this one. I believe that if the players are contracted to go on a tour and they withdraw from that tour, then they should have all faced the consequences, all of them, and not just what many see as the ringleaders.
Unless the Indian government withdraws its demand for some forty-odd million United States dollars as compensation for its losses, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) will face imminent bankruptcy. There is no way that the Board can continue to avoid bankruptcy unless it has that debt removed.
The West Indies Cricket Board, however, must share some of the responsibility for this debt, because it was the Board that took the decision to formally call off the tour after the players had withdrawn. The Board should have cobbled together a second string team and offered to dispatch that team immediately to India.
Perhaps this may have been a practical impossibility given the short timelines and the need to make the necessary immigration arrangements. But at least the decision to indicate to the Indian Cricket Board that it was sending another team would have mitigated the financial disaster that the West Indies Cricket Board now faces.
The Board, of course, may not have wanted to go the route of firing the entire team, because they must have felt that such a move would terminally hurt West Indies Cricket. However, by not doing so; by not firing the entire team, they have achieved a similar effect, because there is no way that the WICB can overcome the burden that the demand for compensation will put on its existing and future financing.
The players are lucky to not have been fired. They made an irresponsible decision. If I am contracted to an employer and I have a union, in this instance the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA), and I have appointed the union to negotiate with my employers; and if the union then makes an agreement behind my back, I cannot turn around and walk off the job protesting the agreement.
Once WIPA would have made an agreement with the West Indies Cricket Board, then any grouses that the players had should have been sorted out with WIPA. The players should not have abandoned the tour, because their grouse could not have been with the West Indies Cricket Board, but instead was with their representative, WIPA. If they felt that WIPA signed a bad agreement, they had to deal with WIPA. But under no circumstances should they have withdrawn their services while on tour.
Admittedly, we are being told that the players had no contract while on tour. But they must have known this when they commenced the tour and having gone on the tour, they were duty-bound to complete it.
I was surprised and disappointed that the West Indies Cricket Board did not take firmer action against the players and did not send a second eleven to replace them. But I guess the WICB considered the future of West Indies Cricket when they opted not to fire the entire team. That future is no better, however, considering the debt which now burdens the WICB.
This issue is expected to influence who will soon be elected the President of the WICB. The Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) has reportedly thrown its support behind the incumbent. And that is a purely rational decision.
The Guyana Cricket Board is under siege from the Government of Guyana. The Government of Guyana wants the present executive outlawed. Dave Cameron has been opposed, and rightly so, to the meddling – and that is putting it mildly – of politics and politicians in Guyana’s cricket.
The ICC charter prohibits political interference in the management of cricket, and therefore the GCB sees Cameron as an ally in its quest to survive the worst form of victimization ever meted out to a cricket organization in the Caribbean. They therefore have good reason to support Cameron.
But also from the point of view of what is best for West Indian Cricket, it makes sense to have someone with the business acumen of Cameron on board. So the decision of the WICB is rational, as is the opinion of the Prime Minister of St. Lucia on what should have been the fate of those who abandoned the tour of India.

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