To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The re­fusal of Kieron Pol­lard to tour with the West In­dies "A" team and the dis­ap­point­ment be­ing ex­pressed with that de­ci­sion by the West In­dies Crick­et Board well ex­em­pli­fy the state of crick­et in the re­gion. Pol­lard re­fused to ac­cept the in­vi­ta­tion to be part of the WI one-day and T20 team for the tri­an­gu­lar se­ries (WI, Eng­land and In­dia) in Eng­land, in­stead stick­ing to a pre­vi­ous arrange­ment to play with Eng­lish coun­ty club Som­er­set in the T20 se­ries there.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the board was an­noyed that it was not able to per­suade Pol­lard to for­go his arrange­ments with Som­er­set–and the pre­sump­tion is that there was suf­fi­cient wig­gle-room in the con­tract to al­low him to opt out. The ul­ti­mate goal of gen­er­a­tions of West In­di­an crick­eters from Headley and Con­stan­tine, the three Ws, Sobers, Hall, Gibbs, Richards, Lloyd, to Mar­shall and Lara was to play for the WI, and noth­ing came close to mea­sur­ing up. The great Sir Viv summed it up well: when he walked to the mid­dle against an in­ter­na­tion­al team he car­ried with him the as­pi­ra­tions of the man and woman in the cane field. Of course times have changed and pro­fes­sion­al sports­men, with a rel­a­tive­ly short ca­reer in front them, have to make most of the op­por­tu­ni­ties to earn suf­fi­cient rev­enue to live a qual­i­ty life af­ter their play­ing days come to an end.

And there are too many sto­ries of for­mer play­ers end­ing up on the pover­ty line af­ter a life of rep­re­sen­ta­tive crick­et to make a young man com­fort­able to give up lu­cra­tive con­tracts. Nonethe­less, and as stat­ed by for­mer WI de­mon fast bowler Michael Hold­ing in his re­cent­ly re­leased bi­og­ra­phy, the quick-buck men­tal­i­ty in­duced by the T20 game is pos­ing a se­ri­ous prob­lem to the tra­di­tion­al game. And, we could add, more so amongst West In­di­ans. Re­mem­ber the Gayle state­ment? But not with­out a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for choic­es made by the likes of Pol­lard is the West In­di­an Crick­et Board. Pol­lard prob­a­bly con­tend­ed to the board that had he been giv­en a con­tract to as­sure him of rev­enue, then he would not have had a choice but to go on tour.

But West In­di­an pa­tri­ots in the Con­crete Stands would shout back at Pol­lard: what have you done to de­serve a con­tract from the board? You have crossed 50 on­ly once in 30 one-day games for the WI, and your high­est score in a T20 game for the WI re­mains at 38, so why should you be giv­en a con­tract? Fur­ther, the fans would be shout­ing that Pol­lard has not shown the abil­i­ty to buck­le down to a sub­stan­tial in­nings and has got him­self out over and over in a non-think­ing man­ner. More­over, those fans would prob­a­bly muse that Pol­lard at 23 has made more mon­ey than Sobers and Kan­hai did, col­lec­tive­ly, in their crick­et­ing lives.

But the dis­tressed West In­di­an sup­port­er would al­so turn on the board and in­quire about a de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gramme to nur­ture the likes of Pol­lard, not mere­ly to en­hance ob­vi­ous nat­ur­al abil­i­ty but to give him the ca­pac­i­ty to play vin­tage Test in­nings and as­pire to more than fast 30s and 40s. We are crea­tures not on­ly of our genes but of our so­cial­i­sa­tion and en­vi­ron­ment, of the cul­ture and civil­i­sa­tion in­to which we are born and nur­tured. Had Pol­lard and the gen­er­a­tion af­ter Lara and Chan­der­paul been nur­tured in such a cru­cible cre­at­ed by the board, there would be no is­sue about choice. Young play­ers would have had in­cul­cat­ed in­to their be­ings what it is to be a West In­di­an crick­eter play­ing for their na­tion.