WICB Stuck in a Dangerous Rut

Reverend Wes Hall called it correctly when he said Brian Lara "acted honourably and honestly" in the way he communicated with the board following the mystery illness that ruled him out of the tours of India and Bangladesh (See related story).

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the WICB president's own involvement in the secretive way in which Lara's fitness progress and availability for Trinidad and Tobago was handled.

Listen, it's not fair or healthy to blame Lara for keeping his illness a secret. That's his right. In this world where the privacy of celebrities take a backseat to the prying and meddling eyes of the media, Lara was within his rights to demand that his privacy be respected, especially after manager Ricky Skerritt overstepped his bounds when Lara took ill.

It's also unfair and unhealthy to blame Lara for the communication hiccups surrounding his return to big-time cricket, a controversy that boiled over when one of Lara's biggest supporters, T&T cricket boss Alloy Lequay, accused the champion batsman of turning his back on his homeland.

Don't blame Lara or Lequay (or Watzisname Ramkessoon). Don't send them nasty letters or boo them at cricket grounds. You want someone to blame? Here's a name:

Reverend Wesley Winfield Hall.

Blame the general and no one else. Yes, it's absolutely right to lay it all at the feet at West Indies cricket's big bossman. Reverend Hall is the man who must pick up the phone without delay and issue an apology to Lequay for twiddling his thumbs while the TTCBC frothed at the mouth.

It's now well-known that Reverend Hall, shielded by his friendly mouthpieces at the Barbados Nation, has been in contact with Lara throughout his recovery. He admitted to being kept abreast of the doctors' reports and Lara's own mindset. Yet, when Lequay (followed by Ramkessoon) blasted Lara for not replying to his mail in a timely manner, the WICB president twiddled his thumbs some more.

It is sickening that Hall hung Lequay out to dry knowing full well that Lara's doctors had not yet cleared him while the T&T authorities were trying to find out if he would be available for trials. Is it too much to ask the WICB president to pick up the phone and call a colleague and explain why this was a non-issue?

Instead, the good Reverend, a trained politician, watched as Lequay was blindfolded for his plank walk. Reverend Hall had to know the Trinidians won't take too kindly to the TTCBC boss questioning their "hero" (incidentally Lequay's own word) and that he'd be raked over the coals for publicly questioning the commitment of their 'Prince'.

It took a scathing column from the Jamaican sage, Tony Becca, to smack Hall out of his silence and we then got the requisite Tony Cozier response (in the Barbados Nation) "explaining" that Lara was, in fact, training under the "watchful eyes" of selector Joey Carew.

We learnt from Cozier that Hall and Carew were overseeing Lara's training regimen without Lequay's (or, by extension, the TTCBC's) knowledge. It is a disturbing trend. Under Wes Hall, the WICB has taken a shift towards cloak and dagger. The criticisms of the current regime have been curiously muted, partly because of the old boys' club being torn asunder by the reign of Pat Rousseau, someone who was popularly decried because he angered the big three - Trinidad, Guyana and Barbados.

Now, in the Wes Hall era, we have already witnessed the backhanded dismissal of Gregory Shillingford for reasons which were revealed by a contract payoff to be a sham. To date, Cozier is yet to question or even write a single columning mentioning the circumstances around Shillingford's firing. Now, we are hearing whispers of plans to move the WICB secretariat to Barbados, to appoint the Bajan representative Stephen Alleyne as the new CEO and also to ignore the fact that Suleimann Benn was suspended and ineligible for the West Indies squad.

Had this sequence of activities happened under Pat Rousseau, the cricket writers around the Caribbean would have exploded in a fit of concern. Yet the 'Bajanisation' of the WICB, complete with the use of the Barbados Nation as its unofficial mouthpiece is as pervasive, if not more so, than the old Rousseau/Jamaica/Jamaica Gleaner relationship.

It is also important to note that the attitude of the WICB to the fans (albeit through the CaribbeanCricket.com web site has been almost dictatorial to say the least. The litigation threat, the overt instructions to all WICB employees to be as unhelpful as possible and the recent attempt to quickly make mileage of material which was so dubious in origin as to be an embarassment to the organ that voiced it are such examples.

The WICB needs to reform and to do so openly. As an organisation, it is run with the secrecy of an old British mens' club, and is highly parochial. This is further compounded by the miserable standard of journalism in the Caribbean cricket media, which has taken to copying and pasting WICB press releases as straight news stories for mass consumption.

The board's official WindiesCricket.com site almost stands as a monument to the inability of the WICB to communicate to its fan base. Fan comments critical of the board have been routinely deleted and fan feedback is now limited to a staffer in Antigua posting edited responses to news articles.

Is it any surprise that the traffic logs of the CaribbeanCricket.com website shows a high number of page views coming out of the WICB office in Antigua? The lack of cooperation from the WICB is almost predictable as it is run with an edict which reads 'my way or the highway' even when CaribbeanCricket.com is well placed to dialogue with the WICB.

(In another column, I will spell out the frustrations of dealing with the WICB's public relations firm, Saunders-Franklyn Associates, a unit that routinely ignores e-mail queries for the most mundane issues. In this day and age, it is maddening that a PR firm that is paid to smoothen things for the media, does exactly the opposite. More on that and the complaints from the private sector about problems with getting responses from the WICB hierarchy when they attempt to do business with the board at another time.)

CaribbeanCricket.com will continue to critique the region's cricket leadership and cooperation will not guarantee party political broadcast pieces. This much needs to remain clear. These are critical times in West Indies cricket. The need for accountability gets stronger as the World Cup (2007) in the Caribbean approaches.

There are some fans who will see this column as a slap in the face of the WICB at a time when West Indies cricket is entering an important challenge in World Cup 2003. I encourage the readers to divorce themselves from the WICB in this case because the amount of direct information, communication and cooperation from the board is presently nil, unless you happen to be Tony Cozier or someone in the sports department at the Barbados Nation.

A closer analysis of West Indies cricket development under Reverend Hall seems to be blanketed under the comfort that former players are now totally involved. That is not enough. It was a guarantee that Wes Hall, a man who has served West Indies cricket as a great player and a radical administrator in Trinidad, would bring the 'boys' back into the fold.

It was not a guarantee that he would preside over the closed shop that now exists in West Indies cricket.

Come on down dear Reverend, the fans are waiting.