UWI Walk of Fame: Good & Bad

When the touring Australians face off against the UWI Vice Chancellor's XI tomorrow, it will mark the end of a week of festivities around the university's cricket week program, which included the opening of the 3 W's stadium in Barbados.

The concept of a Center of Excellence at UWI is brilliant and should be applauded and celebrated by one and all. It is past due that the premier institution of higher learning should take a leading role in the development of cricketers, and other practitioners of other sporting disciplines, both as sporting icons and heroes of the Caribbean populace.

The center boasts indoor practice facilities, new pavilions and a Cricket Walk of Fame that boasts the names of every West Indian batsman that has scored a century in a Test match, and every wicketkeeper or bowler who has effected five or more dismissals. It is indeed a wonderful concept, and if managed well, will help produce the type of citizens and cricketers that the Caribbean desperately needs, and would do well to displace the disaster that is the Shell Cricket Academy.

However, despite all the hoopla and salutations that were showered on the distinguished guests and the two remaining living legends of the 3 W's, I feel a strange sense of disquiet in the implementation of the Walk of Fame.

Now, don't get me wrong. The Walk of Fame is a wonderful concept to introduce in a society that has done little to honour its heroes. After their standout careers, many of our cricketing heroes disperse themselves to far off lands where they are honored, while at home, their legacy is ignored and lies fallow on the fields of inertia.

This is a great start to reverse that trend, and UWI principal Dr Hilary Beckles and company should ensure that the traditions and lore of West Indies cricket has a permanent place in the annals of UWI.

However, with this walk of fame, I must raise the question, are we setting the bar too low? Is their another meaning to the word "fame" that is beyond my ken? How can we call it a Walk of Fame when we'll have a Stuart Williams' name next to Walcott, Weekes, Worrell and Walsh?

Are we really honouring our heroes when an Adrian Griffith is cheek by jowl with a Gordon Greenidge? Is a Junior Murray in the same league, much less belongs, on the same wall with a Deryck Murray? A Phil Simmons keeping company with a Garfield Sobers? Is this the message that we would want to send to the young impressionable minds that may wander along those hallowed halls? That a less than stellar career highlighted by a single solitary century or a fluke five wicket hall could be honored with a place on hallowed Wall of Fame at this aptly name Center of Cricket Excellence?

I would impress upon the brain trust behind this wonderful idea to rethink the criteria for admission to this Cricket Walk of Fame. Let us set the bar a little higher, say maybe an individual would have to score at least 3,000 Test runs with a minimum of five hundreds. At least 50 test wickets and some requisite number of five wicket halls.

The university has to send the message that excellence and immortality cannot be likened to a flaming comet that burns brightly but briefly, but by dint of hard work and spectacular performance over the long haul.