The Independent Voice of West Indies Cricket

Of Honourable Men, the President and West Indies Cricket

Tue, May 10, '16

by PATRICK S. DALLAS

Commentary

The immortal Bard gives us pause in our quest to destroy leaders, perfectly imperfect human beings. He gives us pause at the charges and charging of the “honourable men”, who, at daggers drawn, literally, rid the world of an “ambitious” tyrant run amok. Yet this ambitious tyrant reconsidered without the heat of daggering and honour-blinded personages can be seen to have the citizens of Rome close at heart with the tributes and ransoms of conquest. This ambitious tyrant cried with the poor and in his last will and testament left something for each citizen. Is there a message here as many bay for blood and call for the demise of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and its current President?

My affiliations are laid bare, for I, like Mark Antony, call him friend, brother, Fortis. Yet I, too, have had my differences with the President on cricketing matters. So I speak as one who knows him and that he is human, all too human. So I am pained sorely by the grievous charges, especially the ad hominin attacks, that have rained down in recent times. The charges have come thick and fast from all over the region and without – “he is destroying West Indies Cricket”, “he thinks he’s invincible”, “he is disrespectful”, “he is the most disparaged President by the public and in the press”. The President was taken to task for the team's abandonment of the tour of India in 2014 over a payment issue with the West Indies Players Association (WIPA). Such were the actions of honourable men, who chose to bring West Indies Cricket into disrepute and continue to do so time and time again.

Even with its well documented turbulent history, the untimely termination of the Indian series – as untimely as Macduff being ripped from his mother’s womb - must surely still have been one of the darkest hours for WI cricket. Intriguingly, for many commentators, collective responsibility did not come into the calculations for apportioning blame. It was all heaped on the President, who was accused of being aloof and not doing enough to head the cowboys off at the pass. Then the BCCI demanded a substantial fine and threatened to break ties with the WICB until it was paid. Calls for the President’s resignation were swift and plenty. None were heard for the team captain or the players. Schadenfreude locked the President in deadly embrace; he was to be “quartered by the hands of war” and left “sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything”, “with carrion men groaning for burial”. (As an aside, I have to say that all this had my mind going back to the retort of one well-known Jamaican politician, whose namesake was already immortalised by the Bard in soliloquy on the un-strained nature of the quality of mercy. Rejecting the calls for separation and refusing to fire as a response to fire, the retort highlighted the importance of origins.)

But let’s not digress. One gets the impression that even these avowed lovers of WI cricket (read, critics) were disappointed that the BCCI’s cry of “havoc!” was not as loud and malicious as they hoped, and even more disappointed when the subcontinent administrators did not let slip the dogs of war. Honourable voices fell silent as the President and his team negotiated with the BCCI and arranged for a tour of the WI by India this summer. An agreement to play the aborted test series at another time is also now in place. All this came about because sensible men - being mindful of the non-significance of the idiot’s tale, full of sound and fury – sat down, broke nan together, and sought common ground. The President knew he and all of WI cricket had fallen. Perhaps what is read as ego is the dogged attempt to never yield, but then “there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face”. Tied to a stake and unable to fly, Macbeth resolved that “bear-like I must fight the course”. The President in a similar predicament sought the Fortis way to stay the course!

WI Cricket has been in decline for several decades. The WICB and players have been publicly feuding for years. The current President and his team did not cause this and other ills. The President did not create the problematic rule that states that if you want to play for the West Indies, you must play in the West Indies in the format you hope to represent the West Indies. He wouldn’t have sought to rescind it out of hand either, because the rule would not have had a purely spurious and malicious origin. And the reality is that gone are the heady days of white washing and world records – well, perhaps not quite, for the records. The reasons for this state of affairs are many, so to treat only with the WICB may be disingenuous and self-serving of honourable men and women. Indeed, one of the charges of the recent Barriteau Report is that without intervention women’s cricket in the West Indies would face as sharp a decline as men’s cricket. The Bard would appreciate the irony: this is the same women’s cricket team that has taken the World T20 title! And the people who say this are all honourable people.

That changes are necessary goes without saying. Which changes, when and how, though, are another matter. If we were favourable, we would acknowledge that much improvement has happened under the current administration and the President and his team have taken account of and responded to many of the recommendations in the various Reports. But certainly, not even the architects of the Barriteau Report could have really expected its call for the Board to disband itself to be taken seriously! The Barriteau Report’s call for this disbanding has no legal basis and may have served only to deepen the divisions in WI cricket, especially as several of the region’s top leadership – even some corpulent ones still denying the tale of the tape in front of the mirror - felt compelled to throw their weight around in furtherance of this ridiculous call. Happily, there are still a few current and former leaders in the region who recognise that the legal entity that is the WICB cannot be disbanded by “the fiat of regional prime ministers”. One wonders who is being tyrannical.

Furthermore, the recommendations of assessment reports are hardly ever taken on wholesale, and an entity is usually afforded the latitude to say how it can and will respond in order to improve its performance. The WICB is doing just that, but not in a fashion that pleases everyone. Indeed, the Board is in the process of implementing its strategic plan, and that takes time.

Sadly, calls for the resignation of the President and his Board were again stirred up recently by the impolitic comments of the out of form T20 captain post an international T20 championship victory! A poorly timed tweet flying off the edge of the President’s bat did not help matters much, nor did the suggestion that there was no WICB communication with the victorious team. We have since seen/heard of proof that there was ongoing e-mail correspondence with management and captains from the Office. That could be deemed unfortunate, if my sense of drama steers me towards euphemistic diction. A gauche on-stage display by the skipper – provocative as it was, coming out of left field – does not relieve his employer of noblesse oblige and his duties of seeing to the commonweal of the team, encouraging and congratulating them and celebrating with them. After all, the President ought to know that all the world’s a stage and that Sammy, merely being a player, should also be allowed to have his exits and his entrances. A Darren Sammy at the stage in the lifecycle where he is “full of strange oaths... sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth” should not have robbed the President of his sangfroid. The WICB’s press release following Sammy’s faux pas was the right way to respond and didn’t need tweeting support from the President. Succinct and on-point, it did not beg for clarification from a current educated (and informed?) minister of government with a name that suggests that alliteration was an important appellation consideration of his parents or their nominee(s).

However, these are matters that can be fixed - if men are prepared to be honourable, accept that they have been flirting with danger playing across the line to a wicket-to-wicket bowler and have now been caught palpably plumb in front of the stumps. And if this acceptance then leads to them, on the long walk back to the pavilion, commencing the process of thinking about a better way. Without any hesitation, this is where I think the President needs to become presidential. Batting at the crease, he can’t respond to the profane invectives being spewed at him from under the helmet at silly mid-on by telling the fielder there to “get over it” – even if England’s man at number 10 in the batting order (a distant cousin of the President, perhaps) felt he could do that to a packed Gordon House. No, the President has to take the high road, but ensure that, even so, all parties get to the bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond together.

Still, much more needs to be done. Without being obsequious, the President should still try to mend fences with some of those who wish to see the back of him most. Perhaps the time is come to reach out to an elder statesman (“with eyes severe and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances”), for consultation on how to close the gap with those Caribbean Prime Ministers and WI cricket legends baying for the dissolution of the WICB. I speak of none other than Percival James Patterson. With the affable former Prime Minister now not taken up too much these days with his favourite past-time (winning elections), he might just be amenable to helping the President through this difficult period. (“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune...”) So to the President I say, seek out PJ! Apart from getting a closer look into the mind of the report writer, the President stands to benefit from a wealth of experience possessed by very few. And if – nay, when - this happens, I surely hope the first thing Mr Patterson will do is to remind the President that silence – even on Twitter and Instagram – cannot be misquoted. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

It is truly difficult to see how charges that West Indies Cricket has not moved forward under this President’s leadership can be substantiated. The list of achievements is there that even the erstwhile leader of the Senate could see it. To list a few: installing a professional franchise structure at the domestic level; improving relations with the West Indies Players Association; negotiating a new MOU with the players that should lend financial security to not just the elite internationals but also to players from regional sides. In three years, he has also lengthened the first-class season, ensured that cricket tours no longer affect IPL, ensured that first-class players are paid monthly, and our women cricketers got paid for the first time! And yet, the WICB in its financials for the year ending September 30, 2015, reported a surplus of US$3.5 million (the first in decades!), which resulted in the accumulated deficit being reduced to just under US$2 million. We should also note that under the President’s leadership the Under-19 team took part in the NAGICO Super 50 Competition. How much did this help them in their preparations for the World Cup? Or did it only afford Springer an opportunity to develop another talent – au Dwayne Bravo – and become an exponent of the terpsichorean art?

I remain confident that the President can still turn things around. I am encouraged by his report in the WICB 2015 Annual Report, in which he highlights the WICB’s proposals to:

* Appoint a sub-committee, to include independent directors, to review the few recommendations from the Lucky, Patterson and Wilkin Reports which the WICB has not already implemented, and to advise on whether such recommendation, ought to be reconsidered by the Board of Directors;

* Appoint a change management expert to review the recommendations of the sub-committee; the present structure and management system and the Committees of the WICB and territorial Boards. The expert will advise on recommendations which oughto be considered by the Board to improve the governance, management and administration of cricket

* Take immediate steps to improve communications through various media and methods including direct communication with shareholders, Governments, stakeholders, Legends and former West Indies cricketers and the public by the Board and TBs on matters concerning governance and cricket.

* Take steps to initiate discussions with stakeholders on and to assist with the development of cricket in the territories especially at the school level.

* Take steps to ensure the wide public distribution of audited financial statements and other reports, once approved by the Annual General Meeting and in so far as other reports are concerned, by the Board

* Review the present situation with Women’s Cricket in the West Indies and design a framework for the further growth of the game.

Most important, the President notes that the WICB “stand by these (proposals) and urge you to hold us to the task of implementation”.

I am also encouraged by the WICB’s initiative to have annual retreats involving just about all the stakeholders of WI cricket. The next one should be in June, and from the initial sounds, it seems that serious effort is going to be expended into finding common ground. Let’s all – in the interest of WI cricket – try to support these efforts.

Finally, let’s take the President at his word: "I am not here to destroy the game. We just won three World titles and the feeling is I want to mash it up". What benefit is it to him and the Board to deliberately oversee the demise of WI Cricket? To have his epitaph read “Here lies one whose name was writ in Caribbean rum”? That would be real dumb, and ambition should be made of sterner stuff; right, Marcus Antonius? He may be right when he ponders that everyone knows how to do your job better than you. And perhaps the Bard of Avon would have something to add here too:

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool”.