Understanding the Gayle v WICB issue - A view from the inside
by LAWRENCE ROMEO
In recent weeks there have been numerous public exchanges between the West Indies Cricket Board and the most high-profile player in West Indies cricket – Chris Gayle. These exchanges have ranged from bitter to dismissive and the end result is that there is an ongoing standoff and Gayle is not in the West Indies team. But what are the real issues at hand? No one seems to know for certain as neither side has given a clear picture of what the issues really are. What the discerning public has realized is that neither side is being forthright and have been asking on the radio talk shows and elsewhere for the full truth to be told.
Here is a view from the inside.
For several years, Chris Gayle has been of the view that he has been disrespected by the Board. It dates back to him, while the number one opener for the team, being selected to the West Indies A Team. He felt that even though he was out of form in international cricket, what he needed was some rest and a break away from the game and he would have returned to form. The selectors at that time instead thought he needed to join the West Indies A Team and forced him to do so. Gayle was ticked off but played for the A Team nonetheless.Once Brian Lara was on the West Indies team, Gayle knew he had to bide his time to be top dog. Upon Lara’s retirement, Gayle regarded himself as the new top dog in West Indies cricket and expected to be treated the way Lara was. It is public knowledge that Lara was no angel and was able to get off scott free after many indiscretions. Gayle, being Lara's teammate for seven years, was well aware of this.
The Board too has never been known for its efficiency and decisiveness in dealing with issues and Gayle, like other players, had developed a healthy disrespect for it.
In the interim, Gayle made a meteoric rise to the top once Lara left. In fact, the tour immediately following Lara’s retirement (West Indies to England 2007) Gayle was named captain and was successful – winning the One Day series – after Ramnaresh Sarwan and Daren Ganga led the team through a horrible Test series.
Gayle did get in trouble with the WICB on that tour and was asked to apologize by the Board but refused.
Fast forward to 2011.
On the one hand Gayle has made repeated declarations that he is committed to West Indies cricket but strangely stops his physiotherapy program in Jamaica and departs for the Indian Premier League. Something does not add up with words and action -- they are different.
In retrospect Gayle claims he was fit and available to play for West Indies and was waiting on the selectors call. But if he was, why was he attending physiotherapy sessions in Jamaica? Not just one session but ten sessions; and attending these sessions after he himself announced to the world on Twitter that he was injured and will be out of cricket for some time. The WICB shouldn't be relying on Twitter for injury- and man-management issue but this is what happens when relationships and communication deteriorate beyond repair.
The WICB made a blunder at this point though. Instead of saying in its press release that Gayle was injured and undergoing rehab and therefore won’t be selected as a result, they said they were trying out younger players to broaden the talent pool. The WICB, to its own detriment, took it for granted that it was widely publicized that Gayle was injured and this was known to the public. Gayle has latched on to this mistake by the WICB in his PR campaign and has not let go.
Naturally though, if you are an employer and an employee of yours is on sick leave and under-going rehabilitation (which you have put in place for him) and the employee is attending the rehab but all of a sudden he quits the program and rushes off to a higher paying job for a few weeks, you as the employer would feel most slighted. Then the employee, upon completion of the higher paying gig comes back to you and says ‘here I am, I’m ready to come back to work for you’, you as the employer would be offended.
Add to that the scenario of the employee making derogatory public comments about several of your other employees. How are you, as the employer, expected to warmly welcome this ‘law onto himself operator’ and force the very people he has disparaged to work with him? Such a working environment will be tense, uncomfortable and non-productive. The situation could quickly become hostile and untenable.
The WICB believes it is better to create an environment which is more harmonious and is evidently sticking to its guns. And if it is that the players in the West Indies team are so supportive of Gayle as many have claimed, how it is that not a single one of them has taken a stance and said ‘I’m not playing because Gayle isn’t playing”?
It is important to note that in all of his protestations to the media, Gayle has flagrantly refused to respond to the WICB’s publication of the history of communications between he and the Board whilst he was injured even though he had initially accused the Board of not communicating with him.
The Board believes he is using these extraneous issues as a cover up for his real agenda – that he wants to play for West Indies, but only when he chooses to.
It is no secret that whether or not he is captain, Gayle is the ‘leader’ of the team. He commands respect, and is loved and feared in equal measure by his teammates. His influence is significant and when there are decisions to be taken about what the team should do, his decision is heavily weighted. It is also no secret that Gayle’s decisions are usually in line with WIPA thinking. In fact he has been the most vocal spokesperson for WIPA, even overshadowing Dinanath Ramnarine in recent months.
On the other side, it is no secret that for some years up to 2009 the WICB had effectively lost control of West Indies cricket. The situation was so bad that the ICC in its annual risk assessment listed WIPA as a threat to international cricket and this was raised by the ICC to the WICB. The WICB was told to get its shop in shape as it cannot allow one or two individuals to hold West Indies cricket and by extension world cricket (as it relates to ICC tournaments) to ransom.
The West Indies senior team players were virtually running amok and doing as they pleased. They were applying tape over sponsors logos, striking, refusing to attend official team functions, skipping preparations for international matches, feigning injuries to hop out of matches and such like.
The players began wielding so much power that they even got WICB officials complicit in their abuse of the system with regard to injury and double sponsors payments, approval of suspect injuries and the like. The WICB became a 24 hour ATM machine for the players and WIPA.
The situation came to a head in 2009 when the players refused to attend the ICC World T20 Ticket Launch in St Lucia and then shortly after went on strike (or withdrew their services as WIPA prefers to term the action). Once this happened it demonstrated that the West Indies Players Association and not the WICB were in control.
With WIPA in control and being able to call a broad-based strike at any time it meant that cricket in the West Indies would quickly sink into irrelevance. The game would suffer, fans would suffer, there would be collapse. It would mean sponsors would not be keen on investing and the interest would fall to zero.
The WICB decided following the 2009 strike ‘never again’. WICB committed itself to put an end to the ‘eye pass’ and retake control of West Indies cricket. Their first signal that they meant business was sticking with the Floyd Reifer squad for the ICC Champions Trophy despite the fact that the ‘big boys’ had said they were available to play.
The WICB Board decided that it would prefer to field a team of players who are fighting for West Indies cricket to get better than have a team infested with self-serving super star players who are using West Indies cricket as nothing more than a doormat to their own personal riches and fame.
And this is what the critical difference is in the on-going impasse between WICB and Gayle.
Gayle genuinely wants to play for West Indies but with a big caveat. He only wants to play for West Indies when he does not have any T20 contracts. Meaning once he has a contract with the IPL, Big Bash, Sri Lanka Premier League or the English Twenty20 or any other entity he wants to play there for the big bucks. The WICB is convinced of this as Gayle has told them so point-blank.
Gayle’s position though is not dissimilar to that of Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo. However the difference is that Pollard and Bravo have negotiated with the WICB and have taken the reasonable stance that they will play some of West Indies cricket and some of the T20 leagues and ensure there is a balance. So they make some of the big bucks and they play some of the West Indies matches and mutual interests are served.
Not so with Chris Gayle. Gayle wants to play ALL of the T20 leagues. He did put one offer on the table to the WICB though. He proposed that if the WICB wants him to miss any of the T20 leagues and play for West Indies, in addition to his match fees, the WICB must pay him whatever he was missing out on earning in the T20 leagues.
At the time when Gayle had made this offer his IPL tag was US$800,000. The WICB found this offer unacceptable and proposed to work out a deal with Gayle similar to Pollard and Bravo. Gayle refused – his offer was take-it-or-leave-it.
So in summary the issues are these:
1. Gayle wants to play for West Indies but only when he doesn’t have any T20 contracts around the world. He is not coming out and saying this to the public because he fears the public backlash. He is crying foul and is gaining points in the PR battle because he is using some situations which the WICB did not handle well (like their announcement of squad to face Pakistan) to his advantage.
2. WICB doesn’t want Gayle in the team under his ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ terms as they feel he is not showing any commitment to West Indies cricket or the West Indies team. The coach Ottis Gibson has a serious problem with Gayle’s attitude in this regard and refuses to work with him if he (Gayle) is going to be given license to decide when he plays and when he does not.
What is the final critical factor is that Ottis Gibson has told Gayle – face-to-face – that he (Gayle) needs to apologize for his comments and he will be back on the West Indies team (just like Sarwan and Shiv Chanderpaul came back).
Gayle’s response was that he has done nothing wrong and will apologize for nothing and that he must be selected back to the West Indies team whether Gibson likes it or not because he (Gayle) is a star player.
Gibson has told the Board that unless Gayle apologizes he will not work with him and if the Board re-instates Gayle without apology, he (Gibson) will resign.
The Board fears, with justifiable reason, that if it re-instates Gayle without apology or reprimand that it will worsen the monster it has created and that Gayle will then have every right to feel he is bigger than the game and can do as he pleases when he pleases and will get away with anything. The WICB is bent on cleaning up the rotten environment in the West Indies team but they have come up against an ego which is beyond average.
And so the stand-off continues.