Wanted: A New Administrative Approach

When in 1998 the West Indies cricket team went on strike over pay while on its way to South Africa, this newspaper called for the resignation of the then president of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), Mr Patrick Rousseau.

It was a matter of principle. We felt that the Board had not handled the matter as judiciously as it might have and that Mr Rousseau, as the president, was ultimately responsible. He didn't follow our advice!

The principle was, and remains, correct. But, in retrospect, there was perhaps a larger picture which we didn't sufficiently factor into the equation: the potential impact of Mr Rousseau's departure on West Indies cricket.

Three years later, Mr Rousseau and his deputy, Mr Clarvis Joseph, felt they had no option but to resign when the other members of the WICB failed to uphold their termination of Mr Ricky Skerritt as manager.

Both men, in their action, adhered to the principle which we had insisted on in 1998. It is a principle, recently, and belatedly, embraced by Mr Skerritt, who resigned in the face of the recent performances of the team. We would recommend the principle to the other top officers of the WICB and the captain of the team, Mr Brian Lara.

Our recommendation is not only for the fact of the humiliation being heaped on the West Indies by the English tourists, who, with a 3-0 lead and one test to play, have already won their first series in the Caribbean for 36 years. Although that is part of it.

For frankly, in the historic, social and political environment of the Caribbean no West Indian, certainly no Caribbean nationalist, can easily swallow the drubbing being administered by the Englishmen. Cricket in this context, from a West Indian point of view, is a metaphor for geo-politics. The results of the matches are too much in keeping with the order of things between developed and developing states.

So try as we may, rationalise as we will, in the recesses of West Indian minds, particularly those of the early and middle generations, this is no mere sporting contest. As we have argued before in these columns, cricket is life and the rest is detail.

Yet, the truth be told, a victory by England in this region was bound to happen at some time. And now was more likely a time than any in recent memory. The English, at this time, are a superior side to the West Indies.

Their bowling is better structured and more resourceful, their batting far more organised and their fielding far more purposeful. But more important, they obviously came to the Caribbean with a plan.

Which brings us back to Mr Rousseau, Mr Joseph and the WICB. What the current performance has cruelly exposed is not so much the failure of the West Indian team on the field as the failure of the cricket management in the Caribbean.

Of course, there is much to complain about in the performance of the team. We are indeed appalled by team scores of 47 and 97 in the first and third Tests and the seeming indiscipline and lack of character in the team's batting. But it goes beyond what has happened on the field.

There is no sense that the West Indies went into this series with a plan. Indeed, the team was seemingly surprised by the existence and quality of the English fast bowler, Steve Harmison, suggesting that very little homework was done on the tourists before they arrived. Neither do we sense that the team has made use of the available technology although there is a supposed computer analyst on the payroll.

What the Rousseau/Joseph combination brought to the WICB was the beginning of a corporist approach to cricket management. Cricket, and by extension, its management, could no longer expect to be operated as an amateur, happy-go-lucky enterprise. Preparation, discipline and accountability had to be part of the picture of the international enterprise into which the game had emerged.

The region, therefore, had to find a way to merge natural flair and talent with a structured machinery that would not be subject to individual whim or today's mood. This was substantially understood by the great team of the 1970s and 1980s, but the process was the wrong way round, being led by team rather than being underpinned by a organisational structure. Those who now manage West Indies cricket need to make way for this new approach.

* This editorial appeared in the Jamaica Observer newspaper.