GOVERNMENTS SHOULD STAY CLEAR OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF CRICKET

Jan 06, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Australia is dishing out a cut-tail to the West Indies cricket team. The West Indies are going ‘down-under’.
Ironically, this is an Australian team that is being rebuilt after the retirement and resignation of some of their stronger players from the team that succeed Ricky Ponting’s all-time great side. The West Indies are also in a rebuilding mood.
The difference in the performance levels between the two sides is a reflection of the state of the reserve players in the Caribbean. The West Indies team is really a second-rate outfit and it has been so for a very long time. The West Indies should be playing County cricket. The team is simply not up to international Test standards. This is also a reflection of the poor state of domestic cricket in the Caribbean.
The absence of players who are playing in the T20 leagues is not the cause for the decline in West Indies cricket. When the West Indies cricket team was on top of the world, most of the team played their cricket in the leagues in England. This did not stop the domestic league in the Caribbean from producing players that could make it into this team and compete at the highest level.
The West Indies selectors, players and administrators are deluding themselves into believing that the side will eventually become competitive with the best teams in the world. It is not going to happen unless there is a recognition that the rut started decades ago, and that all the talk about “turning the corner’ has been an illusion. The only corner that the West Indies cricket team is going to turn is the corner that leads to its eventual demotion from Test cricket.
Andy Roberts, who should have been appointed as a tactician to help the new captain, has made a useful point. He says that the Board cannot take all the responsibility for the failure of the West Indies cricket team, the players need to take some.
He is not wrong. His message should be sent to the governments of the Caribbean Community who are attempting to meddle in the administration of West Indies cricket.
These governments, many of whom can hardly recuse their countries from dependency and want, have the temerity to be offering themselves as saviours of West Indies cricket, when in fact their neglect of cricket at the national level is partly, not exclusively, responsible for the fact that the West Indies simply are not producing players of quality anymore at the domestic level.
The governments of the Caribbean have been making the wrong investments. There has been little or no investment in cricket at the grassroots level by governments of the Caribbean. These governments have built a number of stadiums throughout the Caribbean, but very limited investments have been made in terms of upgrading normal cricket grounds and investing in state-of-the-art facilities for cricket. School cricket has also been neglected.
In Guyana, the PPP government actually tried to hijack cricket and the spasms of its attempts are still reverberating in local cricket.
There is no place for the governments of the Caribbean in West Indies cricket. They should stay out of trying to dictate to the West Indies Cricket Board. The governments can help West Indies cricket by fixing the cricketing infrastructure in their countries, none more so than in Guyana, where most of the grounds on which cricket used to be played are in atrocious condition. The club structures are weak and unable to sustain the maintenance of these grounds.
There is a role here for governments, a social role. But in so far as the administration of cricket is concerned, governments should stay out. Cricket is big business. It requires persons with superior business acumen. Governments have never been known to possess such skills.

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