Letters To The Editor...

Sun, Oct 27, '02

Here's an opportunity for our 'Talkback' feature to lend tangible assistance to a hardcore West Indian fan. Among the letters this week is one from UWI student Amanda Lynch-Foster who is doing a research paper on Caribbean studies and has titled it: "West Indies Cricket as a Source of Entertainment - the Music, the Fans and the Players".

Ms Lynch-Foster needs to get in contact with cricket fans from all around the region to interview them, either by e-mail or online chat. She writes: "And if anyone has any ways to help me get in contact with some of our cricket characters, like 'Gravy' or Peter from Trinidad, I would be even more grateful. Better yet if I could get in contact with the great men themselves directly through the site!" Also, in other letters, the fans have their say on team selection etc.

This email is a hail and a request. First, I wanted to big you up for the work you have been doing with CaribbeanCricket.com. Your CC Sporadic newsletters are the only e-mails I will take the time to read aside from those from my mother. And considering I live on a UWI hall of residence with limited access to the net, that is saying a lot about how much your site means to me as a devoted West Indies cricket fan.

My (at this time truly inexplicable) devotion to West Indies cricket brings me to the other point of my e-mail. I am in my final year (hopefully) at the Mona campus and I am doing a research paper on Caribbean Studies. Naturally, being the cricket fanatic I am, it is about cricket. It is titled "West Indies Cricket as a Source of Entertainment - the Music, the Fans and the Players". Because I am in CARIMAC (the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communciations), the paper actually has to take the form of three investigative journalism articles -- each 3,000 words at least.

So, for the article on fans especially, I need to get in contact with cricket fans from all around the region to interview them. I particularly want to get in contact with the people who organise the various posses that support the team, to get an idea of how these groups came about, and the organisation that is put into them. And if anyone has any ways to help me get in contact with some of our cricket characters, like 'Gravy' or Peter from Trinidad, I would be even more grateful. Better yet if I could get in contact with the great men themselves directly through the site!

Could you please post my letter in the 'talkback' section? All those wishing to contact me can e-mail amandla_13@hotmail.com or bajandialect@yahoo.com .

Thanks so much for your (anticipated) help. I hope to see the emails rolling in shortly. (And let us keep rallying people -- dem hurting we, but dem is all we have and we is all dem have.)

Amanda Lynch-Foster
Full-time Windies fanatic




Dear Editor,

How can anyone applaud the inclusion of Ricardo Powell ahead of Floyd Reifer for the Indian ODIs and expect to be taken seriously? As a batsman, Reifer has dominated the last two Red Stripe Bowls away
from home in hostile Jamaica. Reifer was MVP in the last Red Stripe. He followed that up with runners-up spot in an international double wicket competition.

In the process, he has consistently put the best bowlers in the Caribbean to the sword. What has Powell done during that time? Given pretty ordinary performances fairminded observers would opine. Is not the Red Stripe the qualifier for our One Day squads? Ganga is another average performer who should not be in front of Reifer. He can't even get the ball off the square in one day matches.

As far as the bowlers are concerned what is Cuffy doing in India? Are we going to wait to take this guy off the field in a stretcher. I am not blaming Cuffy because he did not select himself. Ian Bradshaw, a quality all-rounder should have been chosen in the One Day squad before Corey Collymore and definitely before Cuffy. One of the much talked about but yet to perform young Jamaican quicks should have been picked. Probably Lawson. He looks a better prospect than Darren Powell.

Finally, Joey Carew. When is this Trini character going to demit the selection office. Isn't there a Trini carnival somewhere that he can go and jump in and let us get on with West Indies cricket. The man has been on the panel for ever. Time to go Carew. Pass the baton to the next generation.

Best of luck in the One-dayers fellows.

Grim Reaper



Dear Sir,

The selection of Gareth Breese is one of the most wasteful and silly selections I have seen in West Indies cricket. It smacks of elitist corruption and the underlying question must be asked "who is Gareth Breese?"

A spinning all-rounder Breese is forced into the touring side at the expense of a second wicketkeeper. Now he is forced into the test team at the first contrived opportunity, for Nagamootoo did not fail in the first test match. He made the mistake of not flighting as he should early, corrected himself and did much better later. Then he made good batting efforts while the better batsmen failed. In the circumstances he deserved a second chance.

This is a disgusting example of games being played at the highest levels in West Indies cricket, while the ship is sinking. Games indeed which cause the ship to sink. The much vaunted consistency in selection policy disappears when it is convenient to promote the son of some West Indian 'jefe', Nagamootoo is dropped after one test and the scoreboard tells the sorry result of this nonsense - Breese 0 for 70 of 19 overs, while the other bowlers are mounting a heroic fightback. If Nagamootoo can't spin to trouble the Indians, can Breese?

If even the anemic six-foot trundler Cuffy had been played instead, with his stock in trade - accuracy - the Indians would have been stifled, and would likely have ended the second day of this second test match, in much worse shape than 5 for 204. Had Nagamootoo been kept he too would have made a better contribution than the inexperienced Breeze.

A huge part of the problem in West Indies cricket is corruption from the top. It smells all the way down to the lower levels and onto the cricket field. In his columns, Kenny Green has helped me to form a reasonable picture of why Runako Morton for e.g, would walk away from the West Indies in Sri Lanka. It must surely be a disorganised, indisciplined mess in the representative team right now, a mess engendered from the top. I can see a principled if hasty youngster being thoroughly disappointed and wanting no part of it.

Team selection based on the level of fairness achieved under Worrell, Kanhi and Lloyd went out the window with the Richardson manipulation over the deserving Desmond Haynes. And the effacing Richardson did his best to select a team that fitted him, one he could command, not one that could necessarily win. In so doing he speeded Westindian decline by a factor of light years, forcing all the veterans out prematurely.

Fairness has not however, come back in through the front door and we now have the spectacle of a very unbalanced, unhappy, poorly led and disorganised team on the field, bringing the region into disrepute the world over. Given the state of things in the Westindies we do not deserve better than we are getting. And it does not appear that things will change for the better anytime soon.

Navin Lamervich



Mr Editor,

I have just discovered the columns of Kenny green. Long have I waited for someone like Kenny green to speak comprehensively and openly about the state of West Indian cricket, and to link it to the state of West Indian society as a whole.

Long I have felt the same way too but in weakness I have held my peace. I feared that my opinion would be considered too out there. Mr Green however, is spot on, moving the debate in a good direction.

Mapoui



Sir,

I agree with Mr Lawrence Romeo's grading of the players 100%. Pity he did not say specifically who you think should have been omitted for the next test. By the way, Ganga is not the answer: he should not be in India in the first place.

John A. Pinnock