An­dre Bap­tise

Dave Cameron, pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Crick­et Board should re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly for his lack of lead­er­ship and fore­sight and for ne­glect­ing to ad­dress the ur­gent is­sues in In­dia, im­me­di­ate­ly as they oc­curred.

The truth is that the WICB had an idea that the se­nior play­ers were not hap­py about some of the terms of the con­tract, which was open­ly be­ing dis­cussed be­fore they were ac­tu­al­ly re­ceived but the WICB, as is their na­ture, did noth­ing about it.

The most glar­ing lack of lead­er­ship was when the play­ers gave no­tice that they might not play the first one day match in In­dia. From that mo­ment, the WICB, as any good, car­ing and pro­fes­sion­al em­ploy­er should have im­me­di­ate­ly made the arrange­ments to meet with the play­ers. This would have sent a sig­nal that they cared about the play­ers and ul­ti­mate­ly West In­dies crick­et.

The oth­er im­por­tant point, which is fi­nan­cial­ly, and glob­al­ly quite im­pact­ing, is that In­dia is the most im­por­tant in­gre­di­ent in crick­et, and with­out that in­put, the taste would be so bit­ter, some would ac­tu­al­ly be­gin to vom­it. At the mo­ment, the WICB, is star­ing at ul­cers and, worst yet, a ter­mi­nal can­cer borne of their in­ep­ti­tude and an in­tran­si­gence lead­er­ship.

It is amaz­ing that the WICB would not un­der­stand that sev­er­al of these play­ers, who they are at­tempt­ing to cas­ti­gate as vil­lains, are loved not on­ly by the In­di­an pub­lic but al­so by the In­di­an crick­et hi­er­ar­chy. And in such a sit­u­a­tion, many of the play­ers would have prob­a­bly dis­cussed these mat­ters util­is­ing rel­e­vant doc­u­ments with the In­di­an au­thor­i­ties. One can on­ly imag­ine their sur­prise when they re­alise the 75 per cent drop in fees in Test and One Day crick­et, the West In­dies play­ers have been asked to ac­cept.

In this re­gard, it should not be sur­pris­ing that the In­di­an crick­et au­thor­i­ties fur­nished with all the avail­able in­for­ma­tion but the trans­par­ent ver­sion and the per­son­als ones would be able to de­ci­pher and un­der­stand the gen­e­sis of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

We in the re­gion do not need to be told by all of the so-called non-West In­di­an ex­perts about our game and how much it means to the World. Our con­cern should be what the game of crick­et means to the peo­ple of the Caribbean.

Per­haps, if the Gov­ern­ments of the re­gion could en­gage each oth­er's at­ten­tion long enough to have an ur­gent meet­ing on Ebo­la it would give the sug­ges­tion that they

col­lec­tive­ly care about the state of crick­et.

As for the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA), there is a now a di­vid­ing line be­tween the in­cum­bent ex­ec­u­tive led by Wavell Hinds and many of the se­nior play­ers, which is not good for the fu­ture.

Crick­et is about the play­ers, crick­et is about en­ter­tain­ment, crick­et is about skill, crick­et is about com­mit­ment, and all of these fac­tors clear­ly have been ig­nored by WIPA.

When one in­de­pen­dent­ly reads all the avail­able lit­er­a­ture on the cur­rent sce­nario, in­clud­ing the time­lines, there is not on­ly gap­ing holes in Hinds' thoughts but al­so words which sug­gests some­thing is miss­ing.

The wise prospec­tive would have been to meet and dis­cuss all of this and re­ceive writ­ten ap­proval to move for­ward with one idea. It is easy to say some­thing in a meet­ing and even eas­i­er to put some­thing else on pa­per af­ter­wards when those in the meet­ing are not in­volved.

Per­haps the WICB, can ask the West In­di­an play­ers to in­ter­vene for them with the In­di­an Crick­et Au­thor­i­ties, as the In­di­an au­thor­i­ties may lis­ten to the play­ers.

This is an area that Hinds and his team should have ad­dressed be­fore sign­ing any doc­u­ments with the WICB, a writ­ten con­sent of such dras­tic fi­nan­cial changes to one's liveli­hood and, lest we all for­get, this is about a play­ers earn­ings.

The old days of play­ing crick­et for love on­ly has passed and whether it is too sad for those over 50 years of age to ac­cept or not is not rel­e­vant at this time. This is a new era, a new time and we have to ad­just our think­ing to such be­cause the game has changed as well with the in­tro­duc­tion of T20 crick­et, which many of the old-stagers did not be­lieve would last so long al­ready.

As to the Ja­maican in­flu­ence, please note the fol­low­ing through all of this, pres­i­dent of the WICB is Dave Cameron, a Ja­maican; pres­i­dent of WIPA is Wavell Hinds a Ja­maican, cur­rent chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the WICB is Michael Muir­head a Ja­maican...so you be the judge about the view that col­lab­o­ra­tion is pos­si­ble or not.

For the mo­ment, West In­di­ans are the biggest losers.