It depends on your way of seeing
Writing about cricket did not come from any specially developed knowledge of the game.It arose from a desire to examine the way we live – perhaps an existentialist's preoccupation with life and what we make of it – and my encounter with the notion of cricket as a mirror reconfigured my way of seeing and provided a medium for exploration.
What has made cricket so central to West Indian identity? Why do we rise and fall to the tug of our cricket fortunes? What is it we seek to extract from it to nurture our sense of rightful belonging to the comity of nations?
Test cricket, running its own meandering course over five days, entertains this kind of rumination, meaningful or not. Reflecting on the state of West Indies cricket as the match at Headingley went its way, reinforced the conviction that the game offers a perfect laboratory for analysis.
In that sense, all I have ever written on the subject has been an attempt to discuss how West Indian society is growing. We have travelled far in the last century, have shaken off many shackles and attached ourselves to fresh ones.
We became bloated from our seven years of plenty, and now in these famine years we cannot wean ourselves away from the trough of the past. The result is mass bickering over the remains, and endless parties of blame.
The Cricket World Cup (CWC) revealed much about a predominant quality in our leadership – a lack of developmental vision, vital to the process of building anything of substance.
What has emerged fortuitously from this is the chance to take stock of what exists, and to ask where we want to go from here. We can continue to be angry and wreath ourselves in righteous indignation, or we can take collective responsibility for charting a way forward.
That process requires accountability, commitment, trust and a strategic plan. In cricket, there is no doubt that trust has been lost between administrators, players and the public. Remedial work requires that full accountability, through forensic audits or other methods, be implemented. Many already feel that they have been deceived and cheated, and in such a poisoned environment nothing positive can survive, however well intentioned it may be.
A strategic plan that identifies goals and sets out the direction toward them has to become a West Indian blueprint for development. It must take cognisance of past and present and be relevant to the future. The information is already there, it has been compiled and lies dormant in the careless CARICOM hands that were entrusted to act upon it seven years ago.
Finally, restructuring the management of West Indies cricket has to happen. People are apprehensive about the idea of a completely new entity to replace the West Indies Cricket Board. It is older than most of us, and it will certainly not be a happy party to such a move, but it has failed and even if it had the will, as it stands, it does not have the capacity to provide what the future demands.
Replacing it need not be done through warfare, but it has to be done as an act of survival, and the sooner we accept that as a practical reality, the more readily will we find ways to achieve it constructively.
We are at a crucial point in our journey as West Indians; even the very idea of West Indianhood has been shaken.
We can see the status quo as a hopeless state of existence or we can seize the moment as our chance to take control of our destiny.
It depends on your way of seeing.