West Indies Cricket About Money, Not Pride

The performances of the West Indies cricket team in the last seven years have baffled the entire population and indeed, even the rest of the cricket world. How could a team, that had so recently set the standard for the rest of the World, have sunk to the depth that the West Indies had in so short a time?

The best minds in West Indies cricket have battled to find the solution but they have been stumped as they sought solutions in cricket. West Indies problems are not really and, certainly not entirely cricket.

The development that began in the immediate post war years seemed to have reached a plateau after the Sobers team began to fade in 1968. The team that had been handed to Sobers by the late Sir Frank Worrell had aged together and they were being taken apart by teams that had studied their techniques and designed methods to overcome them.

The foreigners also had a sense of toughness, discipline and commitment that seemed to have deserted the ranks of the West Indies cricket in the previous few years. The toughness, the pride and competitiveness that were the hallmarks of the teams of the proceeding ten years had seeped away - so gradually that it took everybody by surprise when it could no longer be unrecognised.

There was that bit of history that could have taught West Indies cricketers and more importantly, administrators some useful lessons. But we needed to test the saying that those who ignore the lessons of history are destined to repeat its errors. Repeat the errors we did in spades!

An unbelievable purple patch by Clive Lloyd?s team from 1980-1995 saw the West Indies play without losing a Test series. They fielded the most professional and fittest team in the game?s history. They were the most competitive, proudest, finely knit TEAM in the history of Caribbean and maybe, even international sport. They embodied the saying 'one for all and all for one.'

The men who formed Lloyd's and later Richards' teams were very different from the men who formed the current teams that have been such wimpish losers.

The men on the earlier teams set standards for those who preceded them and they had either measured up or were dropped. Today its the opposite.

The great teams were bred in eras when there was need for the West Indies to prove themselves ready for self-government and independence on the one hand and in the second purple patch, the ideal was to demonstrate that 'Black was beautiful.'

They were terrific motivational impulses and there just happened to be the men around to work them to the limit in getting the best out of the teams.

Management did not tolerate any but the best behaviour and attitude in its players but there was no need to wield big sticks as the young men strove to play for the West Indies. The ambition of every schoolboy who played the game was to play for his country and the pinnacle of success was to play for the West Indies, to earn the right to wear the maroon cap and blazer of the elite of the region.

Money was a small consideration as the cricketers of the eras prior to Kerry Packer played for what would be considered an insult by the mercenaries who play for the West Indies today.

Money is the motivation and the end for the current players. There can be no objection to professional players earning decent pay packages but what is professional?

The solution lies in the West Indies Cricket Board's representatives, the selection committee and the selectors of the various territories, recognising that merely topping the averages in the Busta Cup or the Red Stripe bowl does not automatically qualify one for the West Indies team. In the past and painfully in the immediate past, we have seen men who did well in regional cricket fail miserably in Test level.

More importantly, they did not have the right attitude, the desire to be as fit as possible to do the best they could at all times, for themselves and for the TEAM.

Can you imagine a man going on tour for the West Indies and so wanting to be away from the tour that he fabricates a death in his family to get out of the tour?

The selection of players who do not want to play for the West Indies more than anything else leaves the position open to allowing substandard men to be wearing the colours.

There is much work to be done but the selectors and the WICB must begin to set standards where only the most determined and proud sons of these islands will ever wear the colours.

* SOURCE: Trinidad Guardian