In ad­di­tion to all the oth­er chal­lenges faced by West In­dies crick­et, the abil­i­ty of West In­di­an na­tion­hood to com­pete and pos­si­bly counter the fi­nan­cial pull of com­mer­cial crick­et is now ful­ly on the agen­da. Things are not look­ing good for the West In­di­an in­ter­est mak­ing it over mam­mon. Af­ter months of seem­ing­ly in­tractable wran­gling be­tween for­mer West In­dies cap­tain Chris Gayle and the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) over com­ments made on both sides, a Cari­com prime min­is­ter gets the two to sit and talk and reach agree­ment on staunch­ing the bad blood and sooth­ing the bruised egos on both sides. But in place of pride the more im­mov­able ob­ject of mil­lions of Un­cle Sam dol­lars is plant­ed firm­ly in the ground. From what has been re­port­ed, the two sides were pre­pared to swal­low hard and move on in the in­ter­est of West In­dies crick­et. How­ev­er, Gayle, who has be­come some­thing of a hero­ic fig­ure when he turns up at match­es-but an ob­vi­ous­ly deeply hurt in­di­vid­ual-says, in ef­fect, that he can­not forego his mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts with the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) and an Eng­lish coun­ty team. But that is not the on­ly in­stance of big mon­ey stand­ing in front of old-fash­ioned pa­tri­o­tism. (Thank God, Wor­rell, Sobers, Kan­hai, Richards, Roberts, Hold­ing, Lara and oth­ers did not have to face such a choice.) Young Trinida­di­an spin bowler Sunil Nar­ine re­port­ed­ly has a US$750,000 con­tract in front him to pon­der. If he ful­fils the con­tract it will mean that he will not be avail­able to the West In­dies in the Tests against Aus­tralia.

Nar­ine's show­ing in the ODIs makes him per­haps the most pen­e­tra­tive West In­di­an bowler since Walsh and Am­brose re­tired. But how does a young man say no to a con­tract which would lay down a sol­id fi­nan­cial foun­da­tion for his fam­i­ly and him­self, and take up in­stead play­ing for rel­a­tive pen­nies for the West In­dies? More­over, he is re­quired to hold the pa­tri­ot­ic line against a back­ground of the un­grate­ful treat­ment that has been giv­en to many of the great­est of West In­di­an crick­eters by un­car­ing boards. But Gayle and Nar­ine have not been the on­ly ones faced with such chal­lenges. Dwayne Bra­vo, Kieron Pol­lard and Jerome Tay­lor have in the im­me­di­ate past opt­ed to earn dol­lars in the IPL in pref­er­ence to play­ing for the as­pi­ra­tions of mil­lions at home and in the Di­as­po­ra. The chal­lenges fac­ing the crick­eters are com­pound­ed by the fact that these young men live in very ma­te­r­i­al worlds where suc­cess, ad­vance­ment, re­spectabil­i­ty, even worth as a hu­man be­ing, are count­ed in dol­lars and cents.

Added to those re­al­i­ties is the fact that an ac­tive ca­reer in crick­et, and es­pe­cial­ly a pe­ri­od when they are like­ly to be in de­mand, is short and so they are forced to make best use of pos­si­bil­i­ties dur­ing their prime. Re­mem­ber, even the great Bri­an Lara did not make it on the auc­tion­eer's block when he at­tempt­ed to re­turn. One way for­ward is for the WICB to get the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Con­fer­ence (ICC), which has giv­en its ap­proval to the IPL and oth­er such leagues, to en­sure that the sched­ules they de­vel­op do not con­flict with the agen­das of na­tion­al teams. Cer­tain­ly an ar­gu­ment can be made to the ICC that, in­evitably, such leagues mere­ly reap the ben­e­fits of gen­er­a­tions of in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et played amongst the ICC mem­ber coun­tries. So the WICB has to make the point to the ICC and to all oth­er na­tion­al boards that if to­day the West In­dies is suf­fer­ing the brunt of this blow, to­mor­row it could be Eng­land, Aus­tralia, even In­dia.