A Question of Credibility

Apparently my last article hit a little too close to home for some, when Wes Hall came under fire for interfering with the team management's decision to send Marlon Samuels home for breach of discipline. Despite there not even being a murmur about the affair before the story broke, the WICB quickly denied any wrongdoing and glossed over the details of the affair when it became public.

So much for transparency...

It seems that the WICB chief was either offering Christian forgiveness or else acting in the WICB's best legal interests, depending on where you hear the story. As for the first, I stand by the opinion the it was more appropriate to heed the dictum "spare the rod and spoil the child".

However, the second case is intriguing. Are we to understand that the West Indies' team management is so poorly versed in WICB policies that they were completely out of line with those policies in sending Samuels home? How does this happen? Is this not cause for alarm? Perhaps the WICB could issue
another statement explaining what measures are being taken to ensure that such dramatic departures from policy do not occur again.

We are given to understand that part of Reverend Hall's action was to protect the WICB from possible legal action. It is difficult indeed to imagine that the WICB's fearsome British lawyers, paid in the finest pounds sterling, could find much threat in a mere Caribbean lawyer paid in the Jamaican or EC dollars that a West Indies' player could afford. Having been subject to the attention of those lawyers ourselves, CaribbeanCricket.com can attest first hand to their tenacity and quality.

But wait -- wasn't one of the main reasons for the WICB moving to Antigua the legal immunity granted by that island paradise's government? Even if pounds sterling could be found to oppose the WICB's fearsome legal representation, wouldn't the point be moot anyway? Things just aren't adding up here.

Now, none of this is about Marlon Samuels. Since the offences that started this whole affair, the lad has taken full advantage of his second chance and thrilled us with two exquisite innings that offer a promise of even greater things to come. It is not his fault that his sentence was commuted and in turn he has repaid his benefactors for the risks taken for him. As far as young Marlon is concerned, this issue is behind him.

Back to the team management. Where was Ricky Skerritt in all this? He is not new to this job - indeed he has been the team's manager since early 2000 and if anyone should be intimate with every line of WICB policy, it must be him. However, there is no mention of his role in this nor that of either Sir Viv Richards (the chief selector touring with the team) or coach Roger Harper.

So given the circumstances and the lack of coherent details, the good Reverend and the WICB will have to find some forgiveness for me too if I can only conclude that there is a lot more to this affair than meets the eye and that, once again, the carpet was lifted with the broom firmly in hand.