Col­in Croft (For­mer West In­dies crick­et icon)

Many would think that I should get in­to the melee that is the Cham­pi­on's League (CL) fi­as­co, with the Guyana Crick­et Board (GCB) in one cor­ner, the Guyana crick­et team in the sec­ond cor­ner, the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) in a third cor­ner, and, to com­plete the box­ing ring, there is the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) in that fourth cor­ner. They are all cul­pa­ble here. "If you are hold­ing your head up, while all around you are falling down and los­ing theirs, you might be thought of as be­ing mad, se­nile, out of place or over­ly-am­bi­tious!" I could not get in­to the rhetoric and de­lib­er­ate noise, as I do not, and most oth­ers do not ei­ther, know all of the spe­cif­ic de­tails of the sit­u­a­tion. I have a very good idea of what is the CLT20 2010, and Guyana's par­tic­i­pa­tion. In­deed, I know much more than most, as I have been privy to most, not all, of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween the war­ring par­ties. How­ev­er, I think that it is very bad form to give sit­u­a­tions that are sug­gest­ed as be­ing con­crete, when all of the facts, not the fan­ta­sy, are not ful­ly known. It is one thing to give an opin­ion; it is quite an­oth­er to use that opin­ion as a sug­gest­ed fact.

That is, sim­ply, very poor and des­per­ate jour­nal­ism. Here in the Caribbean, we get away with so much stu­pid­i­ty and noise be­cause we are in­deed in the third World; some say the 13th World; where few stan­dards are met. I will al­ways refuse to go along that route. My opin­ions are mine, but when it comes to facts, I could not, like so many do, use my thoughts and opin­ions as facts. I would need all of the re­al de­tails!

To be hon­est, I am not too wor­ried about the whole thing at all. Most of these things, es­pe­cial­ly those with fi­nite di­men­sions, have a way of work­ing them­selves out in the end. The CLT-20 2010 will go on, with Guyana be­ing ful­ly there too. I am more con­cerned, wor­ried even, about the ac­tu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion as am­bas­sadors off and on the field of play.

What both­ers me more, is the pub­lic face that has again been pre­sent­ed by West In­dies crick­et and that is very poor diplo­ma­cy. It is just so much use­less, noisy, sense­less crap, go­ing nowhere. Sure­ly this could have been han­dled in a much bet­ter way. What I would do is to re­peat as I had done in a pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle eons ago, when a young fe­male so­ca artiste died in a hor­rid car crash while go­ing, ex­treme­ly speed­i­ly, from one fete to an­oth­er, to per­form, try­ing to make the most of the day, time and op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Michael Dou­glas had said, in the film Wall Street: "Greed, for want of an­oth­er word, is good." How­ev­er, this time, I am not so sure, but greed it still is! There are al­ways two sides to any sto­ry. Here, there are four and all of the sides do have a good claim. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the play­ers in­volved should get the re­al bulk of the mon­ey, but both the GCB and the WICB should al­so get some sat­is­fac­tion and rec­om­pense for their ef­forts to help out in this sit­u­a­tion. For rep­re­sent­ing the play­ers, Wipa al­so should be re­ward­ed. The ut­ter un­pro­fes­sion­al­ism, nas­ti­ness and noise need not have hap­pened! So, Guyana's prepa­ra­tion for the CLT20 goes on apace. Be­lat­ed­ly, grudg­ing­ly even, af­ter find­ing all sorts of ex­cus­es for not win­ning the Caribbean's tour­na­ment, and, as is the nor­mal case of those who lose–check out box­ing–mak­ing suf­fi­cient noise to de­flect their own in­abil­i­ties and in­ef­fi­cien­cies, and not giv­ing cred­it where cred­it is due, to the win­ners, T&T's crick­et team is to play Guyana in a few warm-up match­es, to help the Caribbean's rep­re­sen­ta­tive on their way to the tour­na­ment. That is ex­act­ly as it should be! Some have even dubbed the two match­es next week­end as 'grudge match­es'. How they come to this con­clu­sion, I re­al­ly do not know.

Noth­ing is at stake here, ex­cept for Guyana to get some need­ed, very se­ri­ous prac­tice and as­sis­tance in their prepa­ra­tions. In­deed, the onus should have al­ways been on the GCB to find such op­po­si­tion, so as to as­sess its team's strengths. Ex­per­i­ments in both bat­ting and bowl­ing or­ders would prob­a­bly be in or­der, for Guyana, to find out their win­ning com­bi­na­tions. Over­all, though, the Guyanese camp should be grate­ful for the help from T&T. In my mind, these match­es are sim­ply warm-up match­es. Whether Guyana wins or los­es, one or both, all that the ex­er­cise would do, prac­ti­cal­ly, is to help Guyana un­der­stand how ready they re­al­ly are for the for­ay to South Africa. But, what of Guyana and the teams that it will play against ini­tial­ly, in the pre­lim­i­nary stages? On­ly af­ter win­ning some of these will they qual­i­fy for fur­ther ho­n­ours. First­ly, the Guyanese ini­tial first round sched­ule, tough, if they are to progress fur­ther. Guyana has to be pre­pared to play against Roy­al Chal­lengers Ban­ga­lore on Sep­tem­ber 12 at Su­per-Sport Cen­tu­ri­on, near Pre­to­ria. Their sec­ond match, Sep­tem­ber 16, is against Mum­bai In­di­ans, at Kingsmead, in Dur­ban.

Game 3 for the Guyanese, on Sep­tem­ber 19, will be against the Li­ons at the New Wan­der­ers Sta­di­um in Jo­han­nes­burg. On Sep­tem­ber 21, Guyana plays South Aus­tralia at the same venue; Guyana's fourth match. From these match­es, the Guyanese must win at least two, to have the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pro­gress­ing to the semi­fi­nals. That will not be easy at all, giv­en the tough op­po­si­tion. Win­ning all four match­es will cer­tain­ly make them qual­i­fy. Roy­al Chal­lengers Ban­ga­lore (In­dia) in­cludes known play­ers - Anil Kum­ble, Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis, Dale Steyn, Robin Utap­pa, Ross Tay­lor and Cameron White.

Mum­bai In­di­ans (In­dia) has lu­mi­nar­ies–Sachin Ten­dulkar, Dwayne Bra­vo, JP Du­miny, Har­ba­jan Singh, Za­heer Khan, Ryan Mc Laren, La­sith Ma­lin­ga and Kieron Pol­lard. The High­veld Li­ons (South Africa) have some good play­ers too –Alvi­ro Pe­tersen, Zan­der de Bruyn, Tha­mi Tsolek­ile and Vaughn van Jaarsveld. South Aus­tralia (Aus­tralia) will be strong too, with many well re­spect­ed play­ers–Shaun Tait, Daniel Chris­t­ian, Tom Coop­er, Cal­lum Fer­gu­son, Daniel Har­ris and Tim Lude­man.

Com­pare those names, some of them high­ly il­lus­tri­ous, to those of some of the Guyanese.Jonathan Foo, af­ter his ex­ploits at the last Caribbean T20, has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come as well known as Kieron Pol­lard. With his her­itage and ath­leti­cism, he is a nat­ur­al. Ramnaresh Sar­wan, Sew­nar­ine Chat­ter­goon, Nars­ingh De­onar­ine and Travis Dowl­in are all well-known, well-re­spect­ed in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers. They will have to lead, while play­ers like As­sad Fu­dadin, Lennox Cush and Dav­en­dra Bishoo will have to aug­ment well. The play­ers should not have had to go through the emo­tion­al let-downs they have done af­ter the almighty highs they ex­pe­ri­enced in T&T a few weeks ago. Like the pro­fes­sion­als that they claim they are, the Guyanese must now, as Sir Win­ston Churchill once sug­gest­ed, "KBO–keep bug­ger­ing on!" Guyana's CL T20 2010 road has been bumpy, but it is still hold­ing its head high.