Fixing West Indies Cricket Goes Very Deep

Alas, I am merely an ordinary, anonymous West Indies cricket fan. I do not consort with any cricket authorities or pundits of notes, nor do I go about slavishly seeking out the attention of some of them including the past greats. I will leave attention seeking to other more dedicated groups of fans!

However, West Indies cricket brings out a deep passion in me. I grew up in the period when the legendary West Indies team was in transition starting with the retirement of two of the players from the most talented members in this galaxy, Garry Sobers and Rohan Kanhai; the seminal 1975 licking at the hands of the Australia under Chappell; the World Cup triumphs in 1975 and 1979; the ascent under Lloyd; the world champion in Test cricket; the mighty lickings that we meted out to other teams; Viv Richards strutting out on field like a colossus; the emergence of the prodigious talents of Hooper and Lara; the rocket-like ascent of Lara and the simultaneous collapse of West Indies cricket. All of this reads like a Homeric Oedipus.

For many years, I have been involved in debates with various people on the reason behind the demise of the all-conquering West Indies cricket team. To me, the sight of West Indies cricket players going back to the pavilion like a revolving door, bowlers being ridiculed as they were repeatedly smashed all over the park, fielders with fingers as if dipped in butter and captain fearing exposure of his motley crew to a slaughter by taking out the safest (cowardly?) option possible, is like the archetypical fall from the Ancient Greek Pantheon, the gods who fell down to the earth and became mere mortals in the process. There has been wailing and gnashing of teeth. There has been righteous anger. There were people who laughed and said "I told you so!". There were people indifferent to the plight of their team, people who were puzzled and people who simply shrugged their shoulders and carried on with their normal anonymous existence as they have been doing all their life.

These days the thematic of West Indies cricket cannot be discussed without considering the theme of the Caribbean society. There is an indispensable link between West Indies cricket's performance on field and our performance as a people. Indeed, to paraphrase CLR James in his seminal book, 'Beyond a Boundary', "What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?". I have always thought and still think that sports is a microcosm of life. The sports personality is a person first and foremost and what he takes with him on the field is a manifestation of that personality. If West Indies wants to produce high quality players, we need to produce high quality men and women too, otherwise what is the point?

Historically, cricket in the Caribbean started out as an exercise in the expression of the people who saw the game as a mean of resistance, to prove to their white overseers that they could be as good as them under same conditions. From African Emancipation and Indian Arrival in the mid 19th Century up to the Independence period, this game of cricket has been linked to the process of anti-colonialism, and race and class struggle. West Indies took the typical English game, and radicalised it in the process. This process leads to a game that is quintessentially West Indian. This was our first great contribution and there have been many more.

I daresay there is a historical parallel process in the case of Brazil football. Brazilians play football differently. The Brazilian style is like an international trademark, which was registered during the 1958 and 1962 World Cups and given a universal patent in 1970. Brazilians took this violent English game, and infused it with their brand of radicalism. Their games involved prodigious individual skills which outshine team tactics; dribbles and flicks are preferred over physical challenges or long distance passes. Perhaps because of the emphasis on the dribble, which moves one's whole body, Brazilian football is often described in musical terms - in particular as a samba. At their best, Brazilians are, we like to think, both sportsmen and artists [Futebol, The Brazilian Way Of Life, Alex Bellos, Bloomsbury 2002].

People like C.L.R. James, Learie Constantine, George Headley and Frank Worrell used cricket as a vehicle to express the national identity of West Indies. A uniquely Caribbean identity, had a bedfellow in the West Indies Federation, which alas failed to come to fruition. These men knew the principles behind this so-called 'game' and they knew that they would be recognised as people, not as cricketers. They along with others like Everton Weekes, Clyde Walcott, Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai and Viv Richards were not just sports stars, but also folk heroes. They have become like the archetypical Pantheon of gods. They have been mythologised in the process. They knew that everytime they walk onto the field, they carried the hopes and dreams of a people. West Indies cricket hence became a symbol, in which all our creativity energy and abilities were manifested. These men knew that they could not afford to fail, because for them to do that, they would cease to be recognised as a people.

One could say that the simultaneous demise of West Indies cricket and the ascent of Brian Lara, against the backdrop of the declining Caribbean economies and the societal/social disorder served to highlight the anxieties and hysterical of the Caribbean people, who are already fearful of their future place in an uncertain global picture. Previously, the debates focussed too much on Lara?s perceived attitude when he was at one time the captain of West Indies team, the current debates, not surprisingly focus too much on Hooper?s perceived attitude and he is the captain of the West Indies cricket team! I believe that this blurred the critical issue of the socio-political change. Hooper and Lara, represent the generation of cricketers who developed their own identity of self-representation. They had this freedom to determine the context of their career. Youthful rebellious? Anti-social behaviours? Insolence? Call it what you will!

I believe that they did some service to West Indies by shaking up the establishments, mainly the conservative elders and the men in West Indies cricket hierarchy still steeped in colonial mentality, administration and planning, from their stupor. What have they been doing all through the times of plenty when the West Indies team was embarking on their world domination ? This phenomenon has no close parallel in sports apart from the legendary Brazil football of Pele & Garrincha. It appears have been more or less sitting on their bums, all comfortably unaware of the approaching disaster. It is like as if they have been struck by an asteroid, except that everything was in slow motion. Only when in the time of famine do they try to devise some plans, more like a rescue action for the game destined to an almost doomed obviation in the Caribbean region.

I for one contend that they simply piggy backed on the sweat and tears of the classical masters of Learie Constantine, George Headley, through the seminal recognition of Black consciousness in Frank Worrell and his band of the highly talented cricketers on the face of earth, through the prodigious and radical expressionism of batting at the highest of Sobers and Kanhai and the ultimate in the fireband of radicalism in Richards.

We could start to improve our team by adjusting the technical aspect of playing the game, selecting the right coach, and so on, but, I believe that the process goes much deeper than that. This is a different era from those inhabited by C.L.R. James, Learie Constantine, George Headley, Frank Worrell, Gary Sobers and Rohan Kanhai.

The present generation of West Indies cricketers has none of psychological and emotional reasons that drove their predecessors to scale those heights. This generation of young players, think that it is 'just a game' and more importantly as a mean of career advancement and in some cases entrepreneurship. We will be forever, changing coaches, adjusting techniques, hiring nutrition experts, hiring sport 'shrinks', hiring performance enhancers, introducing chaplains, wheeling out PR front people, and so on, and yet we will be continuing the ritual of saying, "Oh well, here goes the series!" and the usual rally cries.

I believe that there should be a two-pronged attack on the problem: a radical shake up of the West Indies cricket hierarchy from the low level of local administration right up to the WICB and the development of a new mode of radicalism in the present generation of cricketers. The latter part might seem the easiest of the two to achieve, but this would require the West Indies cricketers to come up independently with their own ascertained identity, an identity which is far removed from that which inspired their predecessors. My final words would be that the issue of how we could tackle the problems afflicting West Indies cricket is a debate by its own right, something that I will not go into detail at all. Some of these debates have been quite extensive in the Caribbeancricket.com site and the discussion forum and there has been an excellent and prodigious output in these regards!