Col­in Croft

From 1960 to present, Deryck Lance Mur­ray has seen it all in West In­dies crick­et. To­day, I present part one of a two-part se­ries in­ter­view with the for­mer T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) pres­i­dent. See part two next week.

Col­in Croft (CC): What is hap­pen­ing to West In­dies crick­et, es­pe­cial­ly re­cent­ly?

Deryck Lance Mur­ray (DLM): Hav­ing been 50 plus years in­volved in West In­dies crick­et, what is hap­pen­ing now is un­be­liev­able. It would take much time to go in­to 'why.' One can­not imag­ine how far down­hill things have gone, even as we talk about progress and things be­com­ing bet­ter. My am­bi­tion was al­ways to play crick­et for West In­dies. I es­tab­lished my­self, then thought; 'I must leave West In­dies crick­et bet­ter off than when I came.' I cer­tain­ly did that. Around the mid-1980's, the phi­los­o­phy of West In­dies' crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tion changed, pre­tend­ing that crick­et should be run by busi­ness­men, who have no idea about crick­et; can­not run crick­et any more than can they run NASA's space pro­grammes. It is to­tal­ly down­hill; out of con­trol!

CC: We start­ed in that straight line, down­ward trend, about 1995, when (Ian) Bish­op, (Ritchie) Richard­son, (Desmond) Haynes, etc, start­ed leav­ing the team. We have had sev­er­al CEO's (Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer) and pres­i­dents, too, most­ly busi­ness­men, since. Mean­while, West In­dies crick­et is now some­thing of an as­ter­isk, with no re­spect any­where any­more, from any­one.

DLM: Over­all, West In­dies crick­et has be­come al­most ir­rel­e­vant.

One of the eas­i­est mis­takes to make is ex­act­ly what you have just said; that our crick­et start­ed go­ing down­hill from 1995. It was not 1995. Every­thing that hap­pened lat­er had its ori­gins 10 years pre­vi­ous­ly; mid-1980's. As each suc­cess­ful play­er of that era left, we kept say­ing, 'Aus­tralia has an acad­e­my; Eng­land is do­ing this; South Africa, when it comes back in, plans do­ing that, with their de­vel­op­ment.' We went blithe­ly along, with these busi­ness­men sup­pos­ed­ly run­ning crick­et, based on the phi­los­o­phy that West In­dies had such tal­ent that we will con­tin­ue to win. All that they had to do was wait, be around, to get the glo­ry. We all saw the signs and asked; 'What are we do­ing to de­vel­op our crick­et? It is go­ing back­wards.' Not many of our ad­min­is­tra­tors have changed since then. Nu­mer­ous pres­i­dents and CEO's are symp­toms of not be­ing able to make any changes. There is this core of ad­min­is­tra­tors, not just at West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) lev­el but in ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards, who are just there just in case WI crick­et sud­den­ly turns that cor­ner. They have no vi­sion, no idea what needs to be done, to get West In­dies back on track.

CC: Some claim that more crick­et is be­ing played by more peo­ple than ever. Eng­land "A" and Cana­da will even play in our 2011 com­pe­ti­tions!

DLM: It is all cos­met­ic. We had pre­vi­ous­ly had Eng­land "A" in our four-day (Carib Beer) se­ries. Just sup­pose that a for­eign team wins our T20 (Twen­ty20) Cham­pi­onship 2011. Are they go­ing to rep­re­sent the West In­dies in next year's Cham­pi­ons League? There is much talk about de­vel­op­ment for 13-15 year olds, all look­ing good on pa­per but look at the peo­ple run­ning these pro­grammes. It is just jobs for the boys. I have not yet seen one prop­er pro­gramme where crick­et de­vel­op­ment is the main fo­cus. The hailed High Per­for­mance Cen­tre (HPC) has start­ed. Great, we have an acad­e­my! Our sec­ondary schools should feed that acad­e­my. Why are we not fo­cus­ing, in each ter­ri­to­ry, on sec­ondary schools crick­et? Peo­ple are an­noyed when I say that Ja­maica's ath­let­ics pro­gramme is based on its schools.

Schools' ath­let­ics cham­pi­onships is the biggest event on Ja­maica's sports cal­en­dar. Ja­maica has fi­nal­ists in every world ath­let­ics com­pe­ti­tion – men's and women's – 100 me­tres to 800m. We are amazed. We say; 'they are eat­ing dasheen and yam.' Is this by ac­ci­dent or by co­in­ci­dence, they have pro­grammes? Why can crick­et not do that? Crick­et had such a pro­gramme, in an in­for­mal way in the 50's, 60's and 70's. There were no coach­es with fan­cy cer­tifi­cates or cer­ti­fied blue-prints but we all knew where to find our teach­ers, coach­es and men­tors. Our de­vel­op­ment came through our schools' sys­tems and we were to­tal­ly suc­cess­ful.

CC: Many say that crick­et has changed; crick­et busi­ness has changed. The fo­cus is no longer on rep­re­sen­ta­tion but on fi­nances – play­ers refuse US$120,000 per year!

DLM: Crick­et has not changed – bat­ting, bowl­ing, field­ing, wick­et-keep­ing – are ex­act­ly the same. The prin­ci­ples that made (George) Headley, (Don­ald) Brad­man, (Learie) Con­stan­tine, (Frank) Wor­rell and (Ever­ton) Weekes in­to great crick­eters are the same that make (Bri­an) Lara, (Ricky) Ponting and (Sachin) Ten­dulkar great crick­eters. The fi­nances and busi­ness have changed. Crick­et's power­base has moved from Eng­land and Aus­tralia to In­dia. The game is played is the same way, with pos­i­tive move­ments in fit­ness and strength lev­els. This play­er sit­u­a­tion is unique to West In­dies crick­et. You do not see Eng­land turn­ing up and not know­ing if their play­ers are com­ing to play. Flintoff tried to free­lance but that was with­in the con­text of him be­ing avail­able to play when Eng­land need­ed him. In­dia, Aus­tralia, South Africa and Eng­land do not have prob­lems with their play­ers not want­i­ng to play for their teams.

On­ly the West In­dies has that prob­lem. I do not be­grudge (Kieron) Pol­lard, (Dwayne) Bra­vo and (Chris) Gayle any op­por­tu­ni­ties to max­imise their earn­ings. That is hap­pen­ing all over the world, ex­cept in the West In­dies. That is WICB and West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion; let us not for­get WIPA in this equa­tion, as they are as detri­men­tal to our crick­et as WICB. If they can­not work out a sys­tem � sim­ply repli­cate what oth­er Test-play­ing coun­tries do - that is the fault of West In­dies crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tors, not the play­ers in­volved. If the sys­tem was right, the play­ers would do the same as (Michael) Hussey, (Rahul) Dravid, (JP) Du­miny etc, play­ing com­mer­cial crick­et, mak­ing max­i­mum in­come world-wide, and still play re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et. Man­ag­ing crick­et in the West In­dies has changed, to its detri­ment. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it will get worse.

CC: Can we see an up­ward trend soon be­com­ing com­pat­i­ble with the re­al crick­et world?

DLM: We must change the phi­los­o­phy that runs our crick­et; WICB and play­ers. We need much clear­er vi­sion. We can­not change di­rec­tion do­ing the same things as usu­al. I do not mean cos­met­ic things. Look, one of the things from the last WICB meet­ing is that the Un­der-15 and U-19 tour­na­ments will be in Au­gust. Big deal! That is ex­act­ly when those should be held, when the kids are on hol­i­days.

We need rev­o­lu­tion­ary think­ing. If that can­not come from peo­ple con­trol­ling WICB and play­ers, then change those peo­ple.

CC: How will those changes come about?

DLM: When the WICB was formed, it was manned by peo­ple who had gen­uine in­ter­ests in West In­dies crick­et, and we com­plained that they were not pay­ing at­ten­tion to our in­comes. It took Ker­ry Pack­er's World Se­ries Crick­et, cir­ca 1977, to show how to make mon­ey from the game. Apart from fi­nances, the crick­et side was tak­en care of, if not on a pro­fes­sion­al ba­sis. We en­sured that crick­et and crick­et de­vel­op­ment were dis­cussed and took place, through the sug­ar es­tates and the oil com­pa­nies, etc. We had pro­grammes that got all schools play­ing crick­et, all clubs in­volved. It was al­ways com­pet­i­tive and crick­et was al­ways tops!