What happened to our pride, self-esteem?

Jun 25, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – We came across an article in the online edition of the BBC on January 17 that left a strange sensation, and prompted some still stranger sentiments, the more we thought of it. The article was titled, “Ashes: Replace County Championship to save England Test team -Jonathan Agnew.”
Just so that everyone is with us, it is cricket in England of which we are talking today. And before there is any jumping to conclusions about the relevance or purpose of this perspective, we urge reading on to get a better appreciation of the full story.
Many cricket loving Guyanese would know that the English Test team got another shellacking at the hands of the Australian team during the recently concluded Ashes series that was as one sided as it has been for six decades and a little bit. The final score was Australia 4, England 0, with the only thing that saved the humiliated English team from a complete whitewash was the timely intervention of the weather. Also, we note that the writer of the BBC article was none other than Jonathan Agnew, who has been covering English cricket for decades, and is recognized as a class commentator, and one who knows the ins and outs of English cricket. What he is calling for to stop the rut and accompanying embarrassment is a bit of an overhaul of cricket at the County level, which is the first-class level, where English players are groomed, and prove their mettle, for the nation’s Test team.
We look at this and read this, and remind our readership that this is a sport we are talking about, and cricket of all things, and there is this passionate reaction from a cricket pundit and more of the same from others in the English cricketing circuit. It is a matter of national pride wounded repeatedly, and of which the spirited calls are for something to be done, anything that makes sense and offers an opportunity to stop the haemorrhage and turn the tide in England’s favour.
This is how serious this is taken, and some will not rest until they get answers and movement that they believe would make a difference, because of the changes contemplated and implemented.
We absorb this drama involving the state of Test cricket in England, and now move from there to Guyana. What we have here is not sport, not in the least, but what is representative of so much more in the scale of its importance, and the vastness of its meaning for not a section of the population, but every man, woman, and child in this country. It is of what impacts the present generation, and those ones yet to come. We are speaking of our natural resources’ wealth in general and these recent grand new oil discoveries specifically. Our peoples from leaders to citizens, everyone without exception, are embarrassed and humiliated and insulted with the sum of the atrocities that ExxonMobil and its partners throw our way, and the financial and psychic carnage that results from such atrocities. Though our leaders and elites may believe that they are exempt from the gross humiliations visited upon the nation, because of the self-enriching bargains that they may have made, they are made to look feeble and impotent, and not having the substances that count in the demanding world of oil. Thus, they are inseparable from what is heaped on the peoples of Guyana, and it should wound these same leaders.
Yet, it is illuminating that with so much wealth involved, so much national pride at stake, that there is no great, soaring anger at what our lot is, and how Guyanese have been reduced to utter fools in their country, over their own treasure. We, who should be furious and energized to want to do something about our burdensome oil plights (contract provisions, new secret project plans, extravagant expenses, and so forth) are operating at the level of a whimper, and in the worst imitations of modern-day slavishness before foreign masters and predators.
The English are upset over cricket loss, but when we lose billions, we are the picture of complacency and leadership stupidity. No pride, no self-respect, no spirit, no self-correction.

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