In their, and your, presence, I feel a little daunted. After all, the 13 Legends here have an accumulated tally of 1,077 Tests, 47,718 runs, 118 hundreds and 2,316 wickets between them. Were this a football function of similar import, the comparable line-up would be Pele, Beckenbauer, Maradona, Eusebio, Cantona, Zidane, Yashin, Garincha, Banks and a few others of that ilk.

Yet I also feel fortunate that my career in cricket beyond the boundary - and, yes, even within it - has roughly coincided with today’s two inductees and all of the Legends here.

My time reporting on West Indies cricket began towards the end of the playing days of Sir Clyde and Sir Everton Weekes when, as you would appreciate, I was a mere fledgling and I actually faced my first ball in First Division cricket in Barbados from Wes, opening the batting for the Lodge School against Spartan. My partner was David Simmons, now Sir David, the Chief Justice of Barbados – although, the way things are going, he might switch jobs for that of permanent arbitrator in the never-ending disputes between the West Indies Cricket Board and the Players Association. The match in question was back in 1957 and, as I remember it, I stroked that first ball, with all the flourish of a Seymour Nurse, to the square-leg boundary and went on to make a scintillating 16… which remained my top-score for some time. I reminded the Reverend of it a while ago, to which his quick comment was: “You’re lucky to be still living”.

I was fortunate in my job reporting cricket at that time because it was not simply the joy players like the Ws, Wes and the others assembled here brought with their exploits on the field. To have come to know them strengthened my early appreciation of the significant part this simple past time, a legacy of British colonialism, played in the overall development of our societies, all so fragmented by race and class.

A LITTLE SCRAP OF WEST INDIAN TERRITORY

It was an understanding first absorbed from my father, Jimmy, a West Indian through and through, an avid cricket fan and the first West Indian to cover an overseas tour for the Caribbean press, happily the triumphant series in England in 1950. It has been sustained through the years by constant references to the writings of C.L.R.James that, you will find, are to be occasionally quoted during the next half an hour or so.

So, without further ado, here is the first CLR quote. It is a letter he wrote to Frank Worrell in 1963 and it simply stated: 

My dear Frank,

I have nothing to write except that I perpetually wonder that a little scrap of West Indian territory has produced Garfield Sobers and you.

Yours,
CLR James

That was all. There are, as we all well know, countless others CLR might have written similarly to. Hasn’t this even smaller scrap of West Indian territory has produced Sir Vivian Richards, Andy Roberts, Curtly Ambrose, Richie Richardson and Ridley Jacobs?

It is, indeed, a “perpetual wonder” - even more so since almost all have come from working class, mainly underprivileged backgrounds without the benefit of the facilities available in the more advanced countries. They have come from places like the Bayland and the Orleans in Barbados, Maraval and Santa Cruz in Trinidad, Swetes and Five Islands in Antigua, Spanish Town and St.Catherine in Jamaica, Port Mourant and Unity Village in Guyana...

Growing up, as they did, at a time of the unstoppable advance towards political self determination, today’s inductees and those of their era would have been well aware of the part they played as representatives of the one endeavour, above all others, for which the West Indies were recognized as at least the equal of the colonizing power.

They, and their immediate predecessors, demonstrated their ability to excel, even if in a sporting context, in one that was quintessentially British, the “gentleman’s game”.

ESTABLISHING AN IDENTITY

For those who might have been less concerned with affairs of state than with the state of pitches, CLR’s intense, famous and successful campaign to have Frank Worrell appointed the first black captain more than 30 years after the West Indies’ first Test would have been revealing.

The motivation of the early, formative years, on top of a love and passion for the game, was similarly the establishment of an identity.

For the white elite pioneers who initially managed, financed and fostered West Indies cricket, the aim was to prove to those who patronised them from London that, while they depended on them to buy their sugar and to provide grants in aid to run their affairs, they could match them at what was THEIR game.

For those black West Indians who had mastered its disciplines and were afforded the chance, the incentive in the early 1900s was comparable, if in a different way. Even before the emergence of political leaders from the proletariat, they were the exemplars.

According to CLR James: “Individual players of the lower classes, most often black men, became popular national heroes in whom the masses of the people took great pride.”

CLR, who lived through this period and so wrote from personal knowledge, also noted another of cricket’s benefits to the social order. “Clubs formed on racial and social lines played every Saturday in club competitions and not infrequently a white member of the Legislative Council or President of the Chamber of Commerce would be playing amicably for his club against another, most of whose members were black porters, messengers and other members of the lowest social classes. In a society very conscious of class and social differentiation, a heritage of slavery, it provided common meeting ground for all classes, without coercion or exhortation from above”.

All that has now inevitably changed, even if that change was long in coming.

We have proved ourselves, not only the equal of the British but, more than once and once for 15 long years, better than anyone else on the planet.

The clubs have been, to use the modern jargon, democratized, the West Indies captain, and teams, are now chosen without racial bias and on merit, if not always with logic. Colonialism is gone, at least nominally, and every little scrap of West Indian territory has its own elected government, its own flag, it own anthem and its seat at the United Nations.

So the motivation for today’s young West Indian cricketer is not what it was for those of those of the generations of Constantine and Headley, Walcott or Hall. It is, and has been for some time, mainly money.

International sport, and whatever the sport, is no longer amateur. The Olympics and tennis did away with that tag decades ago. English cricket abolished the anachronism of Players and Amateurs in the 1960s. Even beach volleyballers and synchronized swimmers make a living out of spiking on the sand and practicing organized drowning.

Cricketers now necessarily do the same. With the increase in the volume of international series, they can no longer have a job on the side, seeking leave whenever called up to West Indies duty, as used to be the case, expressed a while ago by Michael Walcott in explaining why his father ended his international career when he did.

It is a situation that explains the exodus to league and county contracts in England after the Second World War. It was the compelling reason for the most prominent players of the day signing for Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in 1977 and for those less prominent, and with no guarantee of contracts, heading for apartheid South Africa in 1983 in spite of the condemnation they knew they could cop from their affronted kith and kin back home.

With obstacles now along the path to English leagues and counties, principally because of the indifferent, unprofessional attitude of modern West Indian players, the West Indies Cricket Board has come to be relied on as the main source of income.

Unfortunately, it is a situation that has led to misunderstanding and acrimony between the two parties and opened the way for the intervention of another wealthy Packer-like individual.

WICB vs WIPA

It certainly has led us to the point where an urgent and complete review of the structure of West Indies cricket is required. In many respects, it has remained unchanged from the time the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) was established in 1927.

As the Players Association has aggressively negotiated for increased fees from the cash-strapped board, the division between the two has become wider and wider. There have been three strikes in the past nine years and several more threatened.

Even as I speak, the two sides are at it again over some insipid disagreement over whether the imminent tour of England is under the International Cricket Council’s Future Tours Programme or not. With such distractions, it is no wonder the players find it difficult to focus on the task at hand.

After the first players strike, prior to the historic tour of South Africa in 1998, Dr.Hilary Beckles wrote: “They (the players) do not believe, in general, that the board considers itself their agent; rather they agree to a man that it is their enemy”.

As is obvious from the almost daily rantings from one side or the other, the feeling remains and has clearly become mutual. It is the biggest, if not the only, reason for the West Indies prolonged, pathetic record. The most distressing part is that, in their constant battle of one-upsmanship, neither side seems to care.

THE STANFORD INITIATIVE

As the two continue to squabble, Sir Allen Stanford, a Texan for heaven’s sake, even if West Indian by adoption, has stepped into the breach.

He has thrown some of his considerable wealth, a little matter of US$35 million or so, into the first 20/20 tournament in the Caribbean and, more to the point, won over public and players with a simple public and player relations strategy that the West Indies board seemingly has never considered necessary.

Even before the Stanford 20/20 tournament, he had established this Hall of Fame for West Indies cricketers, the first of its kind in the region. Although it is an easily implemented and widely appreciated gesture - who among us doesn’t cherish respect and recognition? - the idea never seemed to occur to the Board and it took an American to show the way.

As we know, as a prerequisite for his 20/20, Allen Stanford signed on, as his board of advisers, 14 of the most distinguished ex West Indies players, many of whom, for one reason or another, either had strained relations with the Board or none at all.

And he topped it all off by extending the tournament to an unprecedented 19 individual territories, providing them with funding to improve their cricketing infrastructure, assigning each of the Legends to look after a territory and offering previously unheard of individual and prize money.

He employed specialists to organize the event and televise it, sending edited highlights to networks the world over and the final, live, to Sky TV in Britain. During a recent stint in New Zealand for the Sri Lanka series there, I was taken aback to find repeats of Stanford 20/20 matches – such as Nevis against Antigua - on their Sky Sports channel.

Just as importantly, Stanford insisted on meeting and greeting all the teams personally, appearing on television as much as possible and presenting every one of the sizeable prize cheques to the winners himself. To some, it may have seemed over the top, too American perhaps, but, in the space of a few weeks, there weren’t many people in the Caribbean who didn’t know of Allen Stanford and his 20.20 tournament. There are prominent members of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) who would not be recognized by most of the present players if they shared the same lift.

THE OBSTRUCTIONIST WICB

With such a background, it was the 20/20 was a rousing success. One of the complaints during the recent World Cup was that it lacked typical Caribbean fun and enjoyment. They should have been at the Stanford Cricket Ground last July and August.

It was no wonder that Mike Atherton, the former England captain, called it: “Perhaps the most significant event in world cricket at the moment” or that Mark Nicholas, the television commentator and former captain of English county Hampshire, wrote: “Stanford’s calypso cricket revolution might just save the game’s spiraling fall from grace.”

Those who watched and played in it concurred - yet the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) did not seem to see it that way. Far from embracing an organization headed by an individual palpably keen to invest huge sums into a game badly in need of capital, it basically turned its back on it.

Indeed, it was downright obstructionist when Stanford planned a one-off match between his All Stars and South Africa last November, to the extent that the match had to be called off for the lack of the Board’s cooperation.

The Board might have felt that it should have been informed and involved in the 20/20 tournament’s from the start. It might have been wary that the aim of this Johnny-come-lately Texan was to take over West Indies cricket altogether, a hardly plausible scenario of the only entity that has survived as West Indies for more than 100 years..

Whatever the reasons, the Board’s reaction was the same as that the administrators of world cricket had towards the Stanford’s Australian equivalent, Kerry Packer, at the start of his World Series Cricket back in 1977. Yet that so transformed a game in need of a change that the man himself, so initially loathed by the establishment, was hailed as a cricket visionary and accorded a state funeral, attended by the great and good, in Sydney.

A couple months ago, there were, happily, hints of a coming together of the Board and Stanford through a reported deal by which his organisation would pay the equivalent of a franchise fee for official recognition for the 20/20 tournament in future.

It is an association that would obviously benefit West Indies cricket as a whole and it can’t come too soon.

In the puzzling absence of meaningful investment from sizeable West Indian corporations into our cricket and with the World Cup unlikely to produce the massive financial windfall expected, any entrepreneur so minded should to be encouraged, not rejected.

After all, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) remains so financially strapped that, for all the brilliant new stadia provided by governments for the World Cup, it could not hire a physical fitness trainer or a fielding coach for its team, the only one so short-changed in the game’s premier tournament held, for the first time, in our backyard. It was a shameful omission for a team that was one of the first in cricket to have such an individual, the Australian Dennis Waight who was such an integral part of the champion teams of the 1980s..

Keith Mitchell, the Grenada Prime Minister, is one of many who has spoken of the need for a professional league now that English county and league cricket are basically no-go areas. Trinidad already has some players from other territories engaged in their club tournaments through local sponsors. The fact that they are double-crown regional champions is not purely coincidental.

OWNERSHIP AND PRIVATE INVESTMENT

Indeed, there seems, to me, to be merit in turning the ownership of our first-class teams over to individual investors, as is the case in North American sport and now, more and more, in football in England.

It would, of course, entail a change in the structure of the local associations, transforming them into public companies, placing them on the stock market and seeking out investors - government, corporate and private – to provide the capital necessary to make the game truly professional.

What it would do is have the effect of giving every West Indian the opportunity of having a financial stake in his territorial team instead of being frustrated, as they clearly are, by the present limitations.

The relevant governments would use, as their share-holding, the new or renovated stadia they have financed and the companies would be bankrolled, and dividends hopefully raised, through gate receipts, coaching engagements, mechanising and the like.

The resulting companies – if you like, Team Barbados, Team Jamaica, Team Antigua and so on – would employ a staff under a chiefexecutive that would include coaches and a cadre of 20 or so professional players on a year round basis from whom the relevant team would be chosen for various tournaments. They would all be available to play for their clubs in the domestic leagues and would be utilized as coaches and mentors in their off-stime.

Rawle Brancker, the former Barbados and West Indies all-rounder and a dynamic and successful businessman, made much the same suggestion at a lecture in Barbados during the World Cup but applied it to the wider West Indies, with such an overall organization replacing the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).

Brian Lara had earlier suggested a supporters’ membership of US$20 a year along the lines of two of the wealthiest clubs in different sports on either side of the Atlantic – the Green Bay Packers of American football and Barcelona of Spanish soccer.

Clearly, such ideas require further discussion. They might well be ventilated before the committee, headed by former Jamaican Prime Minister, and avid cricket fan, PJ Patterson, that the Board has recently established for such a purpose.

Whatever is done, the point has become increasingly obvious with every deflating defeat and been forcibly driven home over the past few weeks with the disastrous performance in our own World Cup.

It is that things simply cannot continue like this – otherwise there will come a time when there is no one left to induct into the Sticky Wicket Hall of Fame.

I thank you.