The Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) CG Unit­ed Su­per 50 Cup end­ed on No­vem­ber 23 in the most lu­di­crous of cir­cum­stances, as the com­pe­ti­tion con­clud­ed with­out a win­ner. Two weeks lat­er, we still don’t have a win­ner.

A tour­na­ment that start­ed on Oc­to­ber 29 and reached the se­mi-fi­nals on No­vem­ber 20 and 21 end­ed in to­tal con­tro­ver­sy. What a pity! One won­ders how such a de­ba­cle could tran­spire in the face of ex­pe­ri­enced ad­min­is­tra­tors and sea­soned crick­et minds in a fi­nal in front of the en­tire world. Sure­ly, per­sons with some type of rea­son­ing could have sat down and said, “Come on, how can we solve this?” But I will come back to the fi­nal.

Nat­u­ral­ly, as the Trinidad & To­ba­go Red Force did not qual­i­fy for the fi­nals, there are those who have start­ed to throw their big rocks, pre­dictably be­hind Red Force coach David Fur­longe. I sup­pose that is the Trin­bag­on­ian men­tal­i­ty, as noth­ing was be­ing said when the team was do­ing well and they fin­ished on top of the pre­lim­i­nary round. This is a fa­mil­iar pat­tern, where suc­cess is met with si­lence and fail­ure with vit­ri­ol. I won­der if the crit­ics were aware that apart from two games in the pre­lim­i­nary rounds, coach Fur­longe was ill and the squad was put through their paces and the rest of the games were man­aged by as­sis­tant coach Rayad Em­rit.

Coach Fur­longe is even be­ing called a fail­ure, but this is a man who, since he was ap­point­ed head coach of the T&T Red Force in 2019, has won two Su­per 50 ti­tles in the last four tour­na­ments (the last time the Red Force won the ti­tle be­fore Coach Fur­longe was 2015). Be­fore that, since 2010, Fur­longe won 18 ti­tles in the Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion across var­i­ous for­mats (League, 50 Over, and T20) and 24 Di­vi­sion­al Ti­tles at club lev­el. In­deed, what a clue­less man he must be.

Speak­ing of the Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion, the re­cent de­ci­sion of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) to ex­pand the lo­cal league from eight teams to ten teams, with match­es re­duced from three days to two days, rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about TTCB’s vi­sion for the fu­ture of red-ball crick­et in T&T.

What is dis­heart­en­ing is you now have match­es be­ing played over two days, which is now the longest for­mat of the game be­ing played at the high­est lev­el in T&T. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry, but the team is cur­rent­ly prepar­ing for the West In­dies Four-Day Cham­pi­onships, and all of the coun­try’s play­ers will be play­ing two-day crick­et. The team has no chance of win­ning the tour­na­ment. I’m not sure who the TTCB has ap­point­ed as coach, but if Bish­op Berkley is avail­able, he should be con­tact­ed be­cause the team would need di­vine in­ter­ven­tion.

It would be noth­ing short of a mir­a­cle if the Red Force were to fin­ish in the top four. The red ball ver­sion of crick­et in T&T con­tin­ues to sink. The di­lu­tion of tal­ent (with now 150 play­ers in the Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion) and the ne­glect of red-ball crick­et are clear and present dan­gers. Such short-sight­ed de­ci­sions threat­en to un­der­mine the long-term health of the sport, both lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly.

Re­turn­ing to the Su­per 50 Cup Fi­nals, it is shame­ful that at the end of the tour­na­ment, we could not have come to a prop­er con­clu­sion. I un­der­stand the teams were told at 5.45 pm that play would start at 6.15 pm, as the cut-off time for the game was 6.17 pm. The cap­tains were told they should take the toss by 6 pm, as the game would be re­duced to 20 overs. Again, my un­der­stand­ing was that the teams felt that con­di­tions were dan­ger­ous and the ground was not fit for play. Sure­ly all of this must have been dis­cussed with the match ref­er­ee and the um­pires.

Back in the day, when an um­pire said the game was on, you found your whites and took the field, re­gard­less of the con­di­tions or haz­ards. How­ev­er, this ap­proach has led to ac­ci­dents and in­juries oc­cur­ring where games have been played in dan­ger­ous con­di­tions, and we have learnt from the mis­takes of the past. In the mod­ern game, the play­ers have much more of a say when it comes to their safe­ty, and 9 times out of 10, the um­pires would leave the de­ci­sion to the cap­tains when con­di­tions are dan­ger­ous. I guess this was the 10th time the teams were or­dered to play, even though they were con­cerned about their safe­ty.

Un­sur­pris­ing­ly, when the toss was to be tak­en at 6 pm, nei­ther the Ba­jan cap­tain, Ray­mond Reifer, nor the Ja­maican cap­tain, John Camp­bell, were present. In the ab­sence of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of post­pon­ing the match to a lat­er date and/or venue, I would have thought the eas­i­est po­si­tion at that time would be to de­clare both teams as joint win­ners. But again, log­ic has been aban­doned, and CWI has de­cid­ed that both Reifer and Camp­bell must pay the price for their de­fi­ance and con­cern for their and their play­ers’ safe­ty, and they were im­me­di­ate­ly sanc­tioned by CWI. Re­on King, a for­mer West In­dies fast bowler who act­ed as match ref­er­ee, charged both cap­tains with a lev­el 3 breach of the CWI code of con­duct.

Both Reifer and Camp­bell could now be fac­ing lengthy sus­pen­sions for their roles af­ter their teams failed to take the field in the Su­per 50 Fi­nal. A re­port stat­ed both could be sus­pend­ed for up to eight months af­ter they failed to be present for the coin toss, but my ques­tion is, what about the coach­es, man­agers, etc.?

Sure­ly the de­ci­sion would not have been made ar­bi­trar­i­ly by these two gen­tle­men, as they would have been in dis­cus­sions with all the play­ers and tech­ni­cal staff. Play­er safe­ty is para­mount, and the sub­se­quent sanc­tions im­posed on the cap­tains seem some­what dis­pro­por­tion­ate, giv­en the ex­ten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances. But CWI has to flex its mus­cles.

Again I thought some prac­ti­cal dis­cus­sions would have tak­en place, and ul­ti­mate­ly, if the teams did not want to play, why force it? Was it a ques­tion that the fi­nal had to be played no mat­ter what? Was it a ques­tion that the spon­sors need­ed to have the fi­nal played even though the play­ers did not want to play? Was it more im­por­tant to have a fi­nal on pa­per or to en­sure that the game was played un­der safe con­di­tions? It seems the pow­ers that be were more con­cerned about ap­peas­ing spon­sors and main­tain­ing a sem­blance of or­der than pri­ori­tis­ing the well-be­ing of the play­ers. The cap­tains’ de­fi­ance, while per­haps ex­ces­sive, was a des­per­ate plea for rea­son.

It’s a shame that in 2024, play­ers are still ex­pect­ed to toe the line, re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances. How­ev­er, the play­ers, and in par­tic­u­lar the cap­tains, can­not be de­fi­ant; if the of­fi­cials say play, you play. I thought the days for that ap­proach were past us, but it ap­pears they haven’t been, and if the play­ers don’t lis­ten, they must be pre­pared to face the con­se­quences.

Such a pity! Let us wait and see how this turns out, as it ap­pears that CWI is not go­ing to back down, and the cap­tains will have to pay the price for their re­fusal to take the field.

I want­ed to fin­ish on the three Test match­es tak­ing place now: Aus­tralia vs In­dia, New Zealand vs Eng­land, and West In­dies vs Bangladesh, but we will get in­to those se­ries in my next col­umn as they all promise to be in­ter­est­ing for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.