Where to now?
CARIBBEANCRICKET.COM SPECIAL ANALYSIS
Too many special interest groups and persons with ulterior motives and hidden agendas have monopolized the media space on the WICB/WIPA dispute. They have been pronouncing ad nauseam mostly biased views and skewed opinions. It is now time for CaribbeanCricket.com to put the entire issue into proper perspective. In the absence of any incisive media analysis in the Caribbean we are forced to step in and cut through all the bovine faecal matter in order to provide fans with a definitive perspective on the issue.
What follows is a no holds barred, unbiased assessment and analysis of the situation.
WIPA has said that the players did not really strike but that they withdrew their services. A strike, WIPA argues, can only be deemed such if the players were under contract and were in breach of their contract. The players are not under contract to the WICB.
The players withdrew their services because they had not been paid for some time now and have been forced to play without tour contracts for most of 2008 and all of 2009. Effectively they are saying that the WICB is calling them to play without telling them how much they will earn and without making any commitments to pay them. After they play, it takes a long time for them to get paid and sometimes they receive less than they had thought they would be paid.
The players are asking for tour contracts to be signed before a tour and to be paid in a timely manner. This is standard not only for other international cricketers but common corporate practice. They are also unhappy that the WICB has been promising the much talked about retainer contracts but has not been delivering on these for over a year now after the initial round of retainer contracts had expired.
There is a bit of a gray area here as the WICB is contending that it has more than a dozen players under retainer contracts but it has never revealed the names of the players who have been contracted. It is believed that the players on retainer contracts are young development players who have not yet played for the West Indies or who have just played as a result of the player dispute. It is also believed that players such as Devon Thomas of Antigua and Kieron Powell are the types of players who have retainer contracts and these are for negligible monthly sums.
What is clear is that none of the top ranked players – the Gayles, Sarwans, Chanderpauls, Bravos – have been offered retainer contracts.
The WICB is saying that it is unable to offer either tour or retainer contracts because WIPA is not agreeing to terms. WIPA responded by saying that the WICB sends it draft copies of the contracts, it responds with comments and then the WICB ignores their comments. WIPA is saying that WICB’s first position is its final position and that it (WICB) is not willing to negotiate but it is forcing whatever it wishes on the players – a sort of take it or leave it approach even though both parties signed an MOU to negotiate all contracts.
WHO ARE STRIKING?
There is a common misnomer which is being perpetrated mostly by the WICB that there are 13 players who have boycotted. The WICB would like the public to believe that it is only the 13 players who were originally selected to play in the test matches against Bangladesh who are striking. That is a blatant falsehood. There are about 100 or so players who have actually boycotted playing for the West Indies. The regional players, for the most part, are standing firm, arm-in-arm against the WICB. It is not just Gayle, Sarwan, Chanderpaul, Bravo and the big boys. It is a very large number of players. It is because so many players have refused to play for the WICB that they had to resort to picking the likes of Reifer and no namers such as Andre Creary among others who Caribbean fans have not even heard of.
CaribbeanCricket.com has ascertained that the selectors and WICB staff, in the period immediately following the boycott by the players, contacted dozens upon dozens of players begging them to play for the West Indies and they were turned away by these players who made it clear that they were all standing in solidarity with the senior players.
THE SCABS
After the recent action taken by the players it is interesting to hear people describing Gayle, Sarwan, Chanderpaul, Bravo and the others as being money hungry. This is almost comical. Gayle, Sarwan, Chanderpaul, Bravo and dozens of other regional players have stood in unity and have refused to play for the WICB under the draconian conditions they impose and are suffering financially because they are all now sitting at home making no money whatsoever. It is not that they took a better offer, they are not making money. None of the players who have refused to play for the WICB are playing alternative cricket anywhere in the world at the moment.
In fact the real money grabbers here are Floyd Reifer and his band of scabs. They are the ones who have sold their dignity, disowned their regional colleagues, broken solidarity and endorsed the WICB slave conditions of employment for a few thousand dollars. Reifer and his gang have acted selfishly and have effectively allowed the WICB to get away with the feeling that it can do as it pleases, however it wishes and whenever it wishes. The WICB is fortunate that the opposition is Bangladesh who have all to gain from playing a weakened West Indies team. Had it been any other international team (barring Zimbabwe) the WICB could never pull such a stunt. It would have had to have settled with the players as no other properly constituted international cricket board would have accepted playing this bunch of odd balls who make up what is effectively a joke of a West Indies team.
This band of mercenaries have willingly agreed to play for the West Indies because they have little or no regard for the stance being taken by the vast majority of the regional players. The boycotting players are standing up against the WICB for better working conditions for all players (those on the international team plus those are the first class level), to be paid on time and to be given contracts like every other international board does in world cricket, yet Reifer and his mercenary gang have disregarded that and hopped on with the WICB cabal.
WICB TOM FOOLERY
By painting the boycotting players as money grabbers the WICB is hoping to win public support. They are saying that the Gayles, Sarwans, Chanderpauls and Bravos do not really care about playing for the West Indies, that they are not performing well enough and that they care about money.
This is disingenuous of the WICB. It is the WICB appointed selectors who select the West Indies team. If the WICB feels any player is not performing well enough it is within their right to not select that player and find other better players. Have they done so? The answer is no, they have not.
If they cannot find better players than the Gayles, Sarwans, Chanderpauls and Bravos then it is their job and responsibility to cultivate such players by getting the academy started and taking other such initiatives. In short the WICB is nothing less than hypocritical to complain that the players are not performing up to scratch yet it repeatedly selects these same players. For it to continue to complain that the players are not up to par but yet repeatedly select them proves nothing more than the rank incompetence of the WICB itself.
THE WICB
The WICB is the consummate old boys club. Its directors are a power hungry, insular incestuous group. The secretariat is staffed by the most gloriously bungling, incompetent officials in the region (and perhaps anywhere in the world) who find mundane tasks such as booking flights and printing names on uniforms equivalent to rocket science. Together the board and the secretariat are about as perfect a recipe for managerial and operational disaster as one could ever hope to whip together. It would be a waste of time and space to document their litany of errors, ineptitude and gross incompetence.
The WICB, quite unfortunately, is not, in actual fact, a cricket board which manages the affairs of cricket in the region but rather a self interest group concerned only about its own dysfunctional welfare and a nepotistic disbursement and distribution of whatever funds it manages to procure. Whenever such disbursement and distribution are done above or below board is not to be discussed, investigated or reported on. “This week it’s my turn, next week it will be yours, turn a blind eye, hush, and let’s move along” would make ideal lyrics for the WICB’s theme song.
DINANATH RAMNARINE
The president and CEO of WIPA is a major problem and has been for years now. The WICB accuses him of being erratic, hard lined, loud, obnoxious and inflexible. There is little public dissention to the view that Ramnarine is aiming to bring down the WICB for personal reasons going back to his days as a player. Many feel he has many grouses about the way he was (mis)treated in his playing days and is not involved in axe grinding.
The WICB is desperate to cut Ramnarine out but the players have given him their full endorsement and support as WIPA president and CEO. The first class players have voted him back into the helm without opposition.
While the WICB is terrified of Ramnarine and wish for him to simply disappear the players are of the view that he is the only man who has delivered for them. Under his presidency the players have won umpteen arbitrations, have gotten a significant increase in first class wages and WIPA has never been more vibrant and (pro)active.
Loud, obnoxious, erratic and whatever else Ramnarine has been accused of being, he has delivered for his constituents and he has delivered more than any other president of WIPA. The players are hardly likely to remove him for some docile, inactive, ‘unmilitant’ person.
THE LAZY AND UNPROFESSIONAL PLAYERS
Barring Shiv Chanderpaul none of the other batsmen have an international average above 40. Inasmuch as they may try the WICB is not to be blamed for this. The players must take full responsibility for their pathetic averages, both in batting and bowling.
While the WICB could be blamed for not fostering a good team unit to ensure that the team succeeds and therefore the team does not win as often the WICB cannot be blamed for the disgraceful batting and bowling averages of most of the international players. They have demonstrated, consistently, a lack of personal pride. How could these players, regardless of the off field circumstances and challenges be so seemingly comfortable to walk on and off the field of play and produce such atrocious performances? That is not good enough and the players themselves must change that. Their position when they take boycott and other actions is weakened because the WICB and others can quickly accuse them of being under-performers which there can be no doubt they are.
Recently they have won against England and they did well in the Twenty20 World Cup and they have been showing signs of improvement under Gayle but it is not good enough.
One does not need to be an expert in cricket to know that there are senior players who are unfit and who are outright lazy. They are ill disciplined and do not commit enough time to training and practice when they are away from the West Indies team. They are slow in the field and carry more weight than they should. These are not problems which can be attributed to the WICB. This is nothing other than laziness, unprofessionalism and complacency.
Not only this but the players, not thwarted by the regular losses, have been seen to be more concerned and consumed with procuring women’s phone numbers and visiting night spots. It has become a perennial problem. If the team was a winning unit then the Caribbean public is likely to cast a blind eye to nocturnal activities but with the team losing as often as it does the players must demonstrate greater respect for fans and behave in a more civilized manner. When fans are hurting, in tears and emotionally drained too many players, too often, add insult to injury by demonstrating a lack of concern and go about partying and carrying on as if they were winning super stars. And this is not a frivolous matter as some would wish to dismiss it to be. Too many players are obsessed with bedding as many women as they can and doing whatever they must to accomplish their mission far more than they dedicate time and energies towards producing runs and wickets on the field. The infamous Richard Nowell email, inflammatory though it was, gave us enough insight into where the priorities of the players lie.
Academy or no academy this is a matter, principally, of personal conduct. When one has attained the position of West Indies cricketer, one has been elevated to the status of an ambassador for the region. One must conduct oneself in a dignified, courteous and professional manner. It is a concept which, sadly, is lost upon too many of those who have become West Indian cricketers, not because – as the public has been led to believe – they do not know better but because they simply do not care to conduct themselves properly.
It must be in the interest of WIPA to sternly scold its members and to demand that they behave with couth and decorum at all times, in and out of West Indies colours. The players themselves have reduced the West Indies team to a group of saga boys hunting each skirt that passes by.
WHERE TO NOW?
After the meeting called by the Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo WIPA agreed that all the players would end the boycott. The WICB has retained the team of mercenary scabs and has submitted a list of players to the ICC for the Champions Trophy which does not include the regular players. It looks as though the WICB has no intention of reselecting the big boys even though the Guyana meeting appeared as though there was some brokered deal to do exactly that.
It is hoped that the negotiations to be led by Sir Shridath Ramphal who was appointed by President Jagdeo, will bear fruit and that there will be a final settlement on all outstanding issues. Any such settlement will require that both sides relinquish some ground and compromises be made in the best interest of West Indies cricket.
While the WICB may be able to get away with sending a mercenary team to the Champions Trophy the assignment after that is a tour of Australia and it is almost certain that the world champions will not accept a team led by Reifer and consisting of some bona fide D class players. All the parties must come to the realisation that in the best interest of West Indies cricket and themselves they must all reach common ground. The WICB must commit to conducting itself in a more professional manner and delivering competently but so too must the players. And the WICB must demand, contractually, that the players not only meet certain basic standards of fitness but that they behave with civility and professionalism off the field as well and that is whether or not they win but particularly if they do not.