Vin­ode Mam­chan

We are look­ing on at the cur­rent de­vel­op­ments in West In­dies crick­et with some blam­ing the play­ers, some the ad­min­is­tra­tors, oth­ers the grounds­men and oth­ers will­ing to blame any­one who pass near a crick­et ground. Then there are some who blame the prime min­is­ters of the re­gion.

I have been close­ly in­volved in cov­er­ing the dark­est pe­ri­od of West In­dies crick­et, speak­ing to every­one from the top right down to the bot­tom and in sum­ming up my feel­ings about the In­di­an break­down and the cur­rent state of West In­dies crick­et, all I can say is that West In­dies crick­et mir­rors the Caribbean so­ci­ety.

Let's take a look at the ad­min­is­tra­tors for a while. What I no­ticed is that there is a to­tal lack of re­spect shown by those in pow­er. Peo­ple say that crick­et be­longs to them in the Caribbean, but this is so far from the truth. If this was the case, the pow­ers at be would have giv­en a prop­er ex­pla­na­tion as to what re­al­ly went on in In­dia. Since the sit­u­a­tion tran­spired no one from the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) has seen it fit to call a press con­fer­ence and al­low the re­porters from the re­gion to ques­tion them and bring light to the sit­u­a­tion for the fans.

Most of the in­for­ma­tion com­ing out came from press con­fer­ences from dif­fer­ent of­fi­cials from the Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI). Even now, the Caribbean has no idea as to whether the WICB will be asked to pay their bill of US$41.9M to the BC­CI. Every­one seems to be in the dark con­cern­ing this mat­ter. If crick­et re­al­ly be­longed to the peo­ple of the Caribbean, then some­one from the WICB would have seen it fit to come out and give up­dates.

An­oth­er sit­u­a­tion where in­for­ma­tion is not com­ing for­ward is the se­lec­tion of Ja­son Hold­er as cap­tain of the West In­dies 50 overs team. While the chair­man Clive Lloyd gave a state­ment on his el­e­va­tion the op­por­tu­ni­ty was not giv­en to the press to ask the ques­tions they would have want­ed. In­stead they are fed what the WICB wants out, or so it seems. Dwayne Bra­vo, Ravi Ram­paul and Ke­iron Pol­lard out of the West In­dies ODI se­ries in South Africa, a state­ment comes out in­di­cat­ing their av­er­age as the cause but Bra­vo was the sec­ond high­est wick­et tak­er for the West In­dies in 2014 in ODIs–21–and on­ly De­nesh Ramdin scored more runs than him. No one gets an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask the se­lec­tors this ques­tion.

The play­ers of to­day don't seem to un­der­stand the val­ue that crick­et brings to the re­gion. There seems to be a break­down in dis­ci­pline as it the case with many youths of the day. To just pack up and end a tour is to­tal mad­ness in my mind, re­gard­less of what the sit­u­a­tion was. Crick­et in the Caribbean has a deep root­ed his­to­ry and many men fought hard to gain re­spect so­cial­ly us­ing crick­et as a tool.

I had a chat with Clive Lloyd in In­dia af­ter the play­ers left and you could have seen the frus­tra­tion in the man. He could not un­der­stand the youths of the to­day, throw­ing away years of cor­dial bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions with the In­di­an peo­ple. He re­mind­ed me of the 1998 strike threat when the West In­dies were about to tour South Africa. Lloyd had ar­rived in the South Africa and then had to re­turn to Eng­land to speak to the then cap­tain of the team Court­ney Walsh, in an at­tempt to get the team to tour.

Lloyd said in his day he would have walked to South Africa to play crick­et in front of Nel­son Man­dela but the young ones did not un­der­stand things like this.

I agree with his sen­ti­ments be­cause to­day we seem to pay lit­tle or no re­spect to the sport or the icons who went be­fore. To­day you would see men laugh when they are dis­missed but back in the day, if you did that you could not face Lloyd or Sir Viv Richards when you re­turned to the pavil­ion. Those guys played for the peo­ple of the Caribbean, we are not see­ing that to­day.

An­oth­er prob­lem we are faced with to­day is the fact that the play­ers are sur­round­ed by over-zeal­ous fans who give them this false sense of be­ing. These fans who are more groupies if you ask me would try to get close to the play­ers and they will fill their heads with all kinds of un­truth–giv­ing them the feel­ing that they are larg­er than life.

They want to go around town and say that they are friends with this play­er and that play­er, or they are al­lowed to dri­ve around this play­er, or car­ry his crick­et bag–shame­less.

These peo­ple need to know that when they swell these play­ers' head, all they do is de­stroy them be­cause when they face the re­al mu­sic, they fail. No play­er is big­ger than the game and it is bet­ter to be hon­est to them in the in­ter­est of crick­et.

So while we await a turn­around in West In­dies crick­et and point fin­gers to the ad­min­is­tra­tors and cur­rent play­ers, let's ask our­selves if we should start that turn around right in our very homes.