“The Internet, politics, cricket and cheating – Sometimes you really have to laugh out loud!”

May 17, 2015 Sports

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Colin E. H. Croft  
This is not about match-fixing or political affiliations but last week was a wild one, so deviations from norms are occasionally necessary.  Sometimes, you just have to laugh!
Look, no-one can stop nefarious phenomena from occurring if players in sports really want to complete such applications.  Cheating in sports happens, even if we do not want to accept that.
Only last week, Trinidad & Tobago were promoted to 2nd – silver medal – for 4 x 100 metres relay efforts at London 2012 Olympics, after actual 2nd placed Americans were belatedly disqualified, their Justin Gatlin having been banned for one year on a subsequent drug offence.
We know of “deflate-gate’, where New England Patriots grid-iron team was accused of allowing game balls to have less-than-prescribed air pressure, thus allowing quarter-back Tom Brady to be able to hold balls better; to throw; wide receivers probably having similar advantages catching too.
If found to be true, after the pending appeal, then, plain and simple, that would be cheating!
Have you ever wondered how soccer players who are paid over US$100,000 a week tumble theatrically to the ground if only an opposing player’s shadow touches him, but when that same just-felled player scores a goal, his entire team jumps onto his back, yet he still remains standing?
While not naïve, I prefer to allow myself to be conned into hopes that players of Caribbean sports would try to be honest enough!
Anyway, you know by now that I hate so-called ‘politics” even though I, like many others involved in sports, have been subject to regular victimization and ‘politicizing.’
But it was ‘De Kabaka’, otherwise known as Linden Forbes Samson Burnham, Guyana’s first Executive President; Arthur Chung was Guyana’s first figure-head President; who unknowingly convinced me that nothing political was for me when he uttered that poignant suggestion;
“No political party should lose elections if that party holds power when those elections are held!”
Since many third-world leaders operated thusly back then too, and some still do, that suggestion should not have surprised anyone.
Those indicative words were issued circa 1970, long before the Internet, that technological marvel that has been active in since early 1960’s, became real for most of us.  Former West Indies Women’s Team Coach Sherwin Campbell apparently only found that out, to his dismay, last week.
So, while United Kingdom continued its trend of the party-in-power winning recent elections, it is interesting that St. Kitts and especially Guyana have changed political affiliations so much that ruling parties recently lost.  One also wonders what will happen in Trinidad & Tobago later; eh?
In 1970’s, the ruling party in Guyana could never have lost, as there were too many phantom voters.  Now, with cell phones, I-pads, Instagram and all else, everything one does is not only immediately documented, but kept in perpetuity.  Hence actual voters now cannot be rigged!
Two situations in one Guyanese election confirmed that comment to be true and destroyed any political aspirations I may have had.  To this day, I have not fully recovered!
In 1980, I apparently voted twenty four times in Guyana’s much delayed elections, for the winning slate, obviously, even though, wonder of wonders, I was, at the time of those elections, actually on tour in Pakistan with WI cricket team.
In those same elections, all, without exception, of nearly 50,000 overseas votes were counted for the governing party, with, note this, not even one spoilt vote, even as the opposition did not get any either.
That was it for me and politics, but it is nice to see that Guyana is mature enough to make a necessary change, after over twenty years of another parochialism; “Is we is in power now, babu!”
Hopefully, international cricket, with India on 2016’s horizon, will now return to my stunningly beautiful home-country, and that the new government will also understand its real roll in all sports.
But back to Campbell.
I have always had admiration for him as he tried as an opening batsman to live up to thoughts that he could be WI’s new Gordon Greenidge, something he could never have achieved.
Also, it was much revered Australian Rules trainer Dennis Waite, who did such a great job for us WI players at Kerry Packer’s circus and beyond, in 1970’s and 1980’s, whom I heard it from first: “Common sense is not common!”
Campbell had also done excellent work with the WI Women’s team, but by putting anything at all, dangerous or otherwise, on the Internet, he should know that it would never evaporate completely.
He deserves to be fired just for lacking common sense.  As my father used to mention often;
“Ignorance is always acceptable but no-one has any right to be stupid!”
So, what about England’s Kevin Pietersen?  With his feistiness and “belly”, I wish that he could play for WI right now, even if he would have struggled to get into the team that I played in.
What a batsman that guy still is.  What a waste he has become in England.  Disruptive indeed!  Whom do they want to play for them; babies?  Sometimes, you really have to laugh!  Enjoy!
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