Hilary's Sisyphean task

by VANEISA BAKSH

I owe Ezra Stuart an apology for writing that his animus was towards educated cricketers. He took umbrage at that, and to be fair, as I do not write from Barbados, I was taking his words at face value, without the down-home context.

In fact, I was responding purely to his statements, putting them in the context of developing regional cricket, and that was the basis of the "misleading and hypothetical reasoning" that so distressed him.

So I found it enlightening to read his last column because it was more explicit that his animus was directed largely at Hilary Beckles, Cave Hill's principal. Let me say just as explicitly that I know the tireless professor well, and consider him a splendid candidate for cloning if we are to move forward as a region. I also know that his vigour, drive and perseverance baffle many to the point of scepticism.

Be that as it may - this shadow boxing at objects in motion is a Caribbean malaise that needs to be exposed as pure obstructionism - it is unfortunate that educated journalists insist there is a distinction to be made between learning and sport, that you have to be either learned or a jock.

But be that as it may, we need to move on to his other statements quickly before they take root.

"It would be more prudent to harness the raw skills of current West Indian cricketers by devising sports and education programmes," he says.

Has he taken a look at the nature of the programmes being offered by UWI? Has he examined the range that has been designed specifically to meet the needs of not just West Indian cricketers, but all players, as we love to say, local, regional and international? Does he understand for whom the physical facilities installed at the Cave Hill Campus are meant? Is he saying that we should wait till they make the West Indies team before exposing them to training? Even if that is his thesis, is he aware that the West Indies Cricket Board has approved this site as the hub of its regional cricket academy?

Or is he too busy chafing at "a professor's passionate and persuasive postulations" and finding "the appropriate arena, based on cricketing credentials and not classroom cleverness"?

He argues that "while the university's obsession with cricket in regional competitions is evident, it would be equitable if the same thrust is advanced for netballers, basketballers, volleyballers and athletes, who yearn to study and continue their sporting career.".

At this point, I urge everybody in Barbados and the Caribbean - local, regional and international - to step back, because if we don't, we run the risk of missing something fundamental and very valuable to our development.

Before Hilary came along with sports programmes, and credits for students in sporting disciplines, and facilities and scholarships for them, who was doing it? If his primary interest is cricket, if the region expresses itself as a bloc primarily through cricket, then what is wrong with cricket being the first site of this movement?

The essence of the thing, the absolute essence, is that what Hilary has done is to open up possibilities for the integration of every other sporting discipline into the academic world. It is not going to make academics of all, but it will open doors to a better quality of life for them.

The sad thing is that Stuart understands this at some level, for he talks about the "yearning" of these others "to study and continue their sporting careers".

Hilary's programmes had to start somewhere, but they will grow. Participation may be small, but that will expand. There will come a time when there will be no questioning of the rights of students to sporting access, when this will be seen as part of the teething process, simple dialectics of the times. Remember then Hilary's Sisyphean task.

* This column first appeared in the Nation newspaper in Barbados. It is republished with permission.