Vin­ode Mam­chan

I have fol­lowed the cur­rent im­passe be­tween the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa), West In­dies play­ers and the Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI) from ball one. I was in the kitchen so to speak close to the heat in Dharamsha­la, In­dia, when the de­ci­sion was made to call off the tour.What has tran­spired over the past few days has left me with the view that this im­passe did not have to go down to this low lev­el.One has to un­der­stand that the BC­CI was aware of the prob­lems very ear­ly on and they did not shy away from hav­ing their say in the mat­ter.

The first talk of a threat came in the South­west­ern City of Kochi and the BC­CI did speak to the West In­dies play­ers. They went ahead and played the match and the BC­CI was at the point buy­ing time, hop­ing that the war­ring par­ties would come to­geth­er.At this point, the BC­CI of­fi­cials were still talk­ing favourably about the WICB. No one was get­ting an­gry be­cause any board could have is­sues with their play­ers.Some years ago the BC­CI had their prob­lems with their play­ers so they un­der­stood.As time went on, the BC­CI wait­ed for a pos­i­tive re­sponse from the WICB. They wait­ed on the WICB be­cause they did not en­ter in­to any agree­ment with the play­ers or Wipa.

Their part­ner in this bi-lat­er­al arrange­ment was the WICB and they want­ed to hear from on­ly them.While all this was go­ing on, the spon­sors of the se­ries were aware that there could be a pos­si­ble fall­out.As time went on, the BC­CI was get­ting anx­ious, the WICB was stick­ing to their guns, Wavell Hinds the pres­i­dent of Wipa was hid­ing be­hind press re­leas­es and mes­sages to team cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo and the play­ers were get­ting frus­trat­ed.Every­day that the play­ers' frus­tra­tion grew, the BC­CI was start­ing to get an­gry. BC­CI of­fi­cials were start­ing to make emo­tion­al out­bursts.Then some­one from the WICB de­cid­ed to play ma­cho and this lent fu­el to the fire.

All of a sud­den all hell broke loose, when this of­fi­cial in­formed the BC­CI that, talks (which nev­er oc­curred) broke down be­tween the play­ers and they were will­ing to send a sec­ond string team to play the re­main­der of the se­ries.This did not go down too well with the BC­CI and they re­fused say­ing that they would not ac­cept a sec­ond string team be­cause when they sold the se­ries to their busi­ness part­ners, they were sell­ing the clash of two first teams, no A team or B team.It is al­leged that the of­fi­cial of the WICB told the BC­CI of­fi­cials that they could go ahead and sue the re­gion­al board if they want.

Ob­vi­ous­ly the BC­CI would have re­alised that at this point the WICB did not have an in­ter­est in hav­ing the tour com­plet­ed with their se­nior play­ers.This caused the rage and al­though both boards have en­joyed a won­der­ful re­la­tion­ship over the past decades, it count­ed for noth­ing, with this to­tal­ly ar­ro­gant move.Well the ma­cho talk of: "Sue if all yuh want," could now leave men with­out their pants.West In­dies crick­et has been ward­ed in the ICU de­part­ment when it comes to their fi­nances for quite some time.With spon­sor­ship not read­i­ly com­ing be­cause the team was not do­ing well, the WICB ad­min­is­tra­tors had their work cut out in get­ting fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance.Bal­dath Ma­habir a di­rec­tor of the board charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of mar­ket­ing was do­ing a good job in cre­at­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence and now this. If the In­di­ans go ahead with this law­suit then West In­dies crick­et could die or at best re­main in a co­matose sit­u­a­tion for a very long time to come.