Where is Your Commitment?

Last April, when Chris Gayle blew off the Carib Beer finals to chase the money from the Double-Wicket World Cup, he was promptly dropped from the West Indies team. At the time, chairman of selectors Sir Viv Richards made it a point to upbraid the opener for his lack of commitment.

One year later, the shoes are on the other foot and the hypocrisy is startling. We have a situation where the region's top prospects/reserves are on display in Barbados (Carib Beer finals and Carib Beer XI v England) and two senior selectors -- Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge -- are yukking it up in a fete match in Grenada. Where exactly is your commitment Sir Viv? How about you, Mr. Greenidge? What's your excuse?

West Indies cricket is in crisis mode. We're down 0-2 to the hated English. We have 40 of our prized reserves playing first-class games in the same country. What better way for the selectors to monitor the return of Jermaine Lawson and Omari Banks? What better opportunity to keep a close watch on the likes of Xavier Marshall, Kurt Wilkinson, Dwayne Bravo, Andrew Richardson, Dinesh Ramdin and Dwight Washington?

Instead, for an appearance fee of between US$1,000 and US$2,000 (we know that Richards and Greenidge were paid by the Grenada Board of Tourism), our two most outspoken selectors chose to blow off the finals of our premier first class competition. They chose to ignore the return of Omari Banks and Jermaine Lawson.

This smacks of a selfishness that borders on arrogance.

If Richards wants to be heard when he preaches the virtues of focus, discipline and commitment, he must first set a better example. The same goes for Gordon Greenidge, who surely must be running out of strikes by now.

When Carl Hooper walked away from West Indies cricket just before the series against Australia last year, Greenidge wasted no time getting his two-cents in. He even wrote a column in Keith Holder's Clico Quarterly magazine, slamming Hooper's suddenly withdrawal as "a sad blow" and in "very bad taste."

Here is Greenidge on Hooper, in his own words: "From reports of a person who said he was interested in West Indies cricket and was still willing to play on, it was a very sad blow and really a slap in the face of West Indies cricket which you are supposed to have so much great feeling for. This leaves me to think otherwise."

Yes folks, this is the same Greenidge who was MIA from Barbados last week when his duties as a West Indies selector called for him to be scouting talent. The same Greenidge who refused to acknowledge a clear conflict of interest when he accepted a job as coach of Bangladesh's World Cup team.

At that time, Greenidge should have been asked to resign but, because of the incestuous back-scratching culture embedded in the WICB, he is still around setting a terrible example.

The WICB pays a stipend of US$200 per day to senior selectors, on top of air travel and accommodation (the chairman is even entitled to a hotel suite). On average, the board spends about US$200,000 a year on the senior selection panel alone.

That's a lot of money to be spending on selectors who aren't accountable to anyone. When they choose to ignore talent scouting and run off to get paid to appear in fete matches, it shouldn't be tolerated.

Just last evening, WICB boss Teddy Griffith announced that vice president Val Banks would "review the management structure" of the senior team and submit a report by April 23. Perhaps it's time for the president to commission a report on the operations of the selection panel.

It's time we start demanding accountability at all levels and get rid of this "untouchable" concept. Until then, we'll always have selectors using the "do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do" excuse.