Blame the WICB Directors
Thu, Aug 12, '04
If there is ever to be any progress in West Indies cricket, the directors of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) need to stop protecting their personal and national interests.
As much as the captain or manager or coach du jour are popular scapegoats for the woes of West Indies cricket, everyone knows that the root cause is much deeper.
Take for example the concept of player movement between teams in the region. Like many forward looking ideas it doesn't happen because the directors would never let it happen. Can you imagine the look on Chetram Singh's face if someone suggested that Reon Griffith and Rayon Thomas could just wander off and play for another team where they would be guaranteed to open the bowling, every match?
When Ricardo Powell moved to his wife's native Trinidad and took a place in the T&T team, all kinds of backroom approvals had to take place. Although there is no actual rule preventing such transfers, there is a typically Caribbean wink-and-nod system that requires the player's national board to 'release' him before another board will pick him up. Had Jamaica shown any reluctance at all, T&T would have backed off and Powell would have spent the season watching cricket from the stands.
It is certainly not a new idea to suggest that there needs to be greater freedom of movement for players in West Indies domestic cricket. The fact is, the single biggest reason the standard of domestic cricket is lower than it should be is because it does not pit the best players in the region against each other.
Barbados has five (maybe six if you count Vasbert Drakes) of the best fast bowlers in the region. Often there is no place for Fidel Edwards, who will open the bowling for the West Indies. Vasbert Drakes isn't even in the Barbados training squad - imagine what a player of his experience could do for some of the rebuilding teams in the region.
While some teams cannot find room for recent Test players, others seem to be rounding up players from local tapeball tournaments. A look at the Windwards shows a very shallow talent pool among the current players. It is unrealistic to expect that the cream of the crop will be evenly distributed around the region or that the distribution will remain constant from year to year.
The truth is that the rigid code that effectively restricts players to their national boards does a disservice to everyone. In some cases older players with plenty of good first class cricket left in them are being put out to pasture far too early, to be left hoping for a call up in case of injury or a sudden need of experience. In others, young players who dominate Under-19 cricket sit on a bench waiting for a turn.
What is required is for someone to give some of the directors of the WICB -- the people who are supposed to be making decisions that benefit it -- a good swift kick in the backside. These scoundrels have managed for years to stamp out most of the best attempts at innovation coming from the people retained to come up with ways to make things better. We have seen how they have managed to ignore the Cricket Committee out of existence. When the committee recommended (in a move that would likely have seen Ramnaresh Sarwan leading a strong U-23 side and getting on-the-job leadership training) that the WI 'B' team be selected before the national boards announced their teams, Chetram Singh and Jackie Hendricks quickly put an end to the idea. Shame on both of them for failing West Indies cricket far more than Brian Lara, or Gus Logie, or any of the players ever have.
We as West Indies fans must continue to demand better, not only from our players, but from the people who have been appointed to safeguard our heritage. These are the ones who have put themselves in ultimate authority and who must accept ultimate responsibility for the amateur nature of our domestic competitions, for the complete lack of a fitness culture at the territorial level, and for the huge gap between the 'A' and 'B' teams and the Test teams.
Given the continual interference and politicking in which these people so often indulge, it seems likely that the best thing they could do is to remove themselves from the picture altogether and let the professionals they hire do their jobs. It is time for the directors to relinquish control of every aspect of the running of the WICB and focus on simply setting direction and policy. Only then will there be any chance of addressing the root causes of what has gone so badly wrong.