More opinions of the WICB/WIPA conflict
Mon, Oct 27, '14
WI cricket more important than egos
West Indies cricket is more important to the people of the region and the international cricket community than the stubborn egos of ODI captain and the players who took the decision to abandon the tour of India, the president and CEO of Wipa and the executive of the WICB. Good sense and even common sense should have prevailed in handling the impasse which eventuated in the sudden abandonment of the tour of India.
The abandonment of the tour is embarrassing not only for West Indies cricket, but to the people of the Caribbean. This fiasco comes right on the heels of another unsavoury international humiliation experienced by the T&T women footballers because of managerial blunders of the TTFA. These situations continue to provide “justification” to the view that developing countries cannot manage their affairs in a highly professional manner.
India should be trying to help save West Indian cricket
It was a promotional email about a new DVD version of Fire in Babylon, a few weeks ago, which made me sit down once again in front of one of the greatest films to have emerged from the field of sport. The story it tells of how the great West Indies side of the 1970s used cricket – their colonisers’ game – as a devastating expression of their independent spirit is so inspirational that you wonder how the team and Test cricket on the islands can have withered to a state of near collapse in the space of just 40 years.
Dwayne Bravo and his players have just become the first team to abandon a tour – in India – because of a dispute over pay and, amid the catalogue of incompetence and intransigence which has brought things to this, you wonder why someone didn’t think to sit the players down in front of Stevan Riley’s masterpiece.
The Independent
'I never put up my hand' Samuels hits back at Bravo;
West Indies batsman, Marlon Samuels, has strongly denied several assertions made by West Indies one-day captain, Dwayne Bravo, in a letter issued to the media at the weekend.
The letter, the latest in a series by Bravo, refuted previous comments made by Samuels in a radio interview done early last week, where the latter distanced himself from the player boycott of the recently concluded West Indies tour of India.
Replying to a part of the letter which stated, "Mr Samuels was invited to, and did attend the majority of meetings with the players on tour", Samuels said such a statement is not true.
WIPA on solid ground
While still trying to digest the somewhat farcical inaugural West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) Player Draft of the Professional League held here last Monday, the fun continued hours later with a threatened strike by Dwayne Bravo’s team ahead of the first One-Day International against India in Kochi.
Immediately on hearing of and then reading the charges laid by Bravo, one had to apply the adage of three sides to a story: Yours, mine and the truth.
