Jul 31 2009
West Indies Cricket in deep, deep trouble. Again.
As the ICC bosses scramble to let the Test match flame continue blazing, it seems that they have been hit by another issue that could see one of their member nations – and a major one at that – go down the cricketing drain, if an equal amount of restraint does not get exercised by the respective stake-holders. It wouldn’t be too far from the mark if I said that the West Indian cricket, which till more recently had been burning a slow death, has suddenly accelerated this process of self-destruction instead of dousing itself with the right processes in place.
As an Indian, there was a clear dwindling of interest for me when the team crashed out of the World Cup of 2007. But as a cricket fan, I had pulled myself together to follow the rest of the tournament, which incidentally was being played in the Caribbean; and very soon, like the many others, I realised that the tournament was an apt presentation of how not to organize a major cricket tournament. That it was being played in West Indies seemed only coincidental at that stage, but now, as things currently stand, I am not so sure.
The organisers had made two glaring mistakes, which cannot be shoved under the carpet as being trivial. One, in an event of this magnitude, a tournament which was, at least at that time the cynosure of the world eyes, disallowed the spectators from getting in musical instruments and jacked up the rates to the extent that there weren’t too many locals found in the stands. Instead, the proceedings had been devoid of any colour (no puns intended), or fervour that is usually associated with a celebration of this sort.
So why do I rake up an issue which seemingly has nothing to do with the current contracts’ dispute in which the players and the board seem to be on the different sides of a fence? Quite simple, the problems being faced by the West Indian cricket at this current moments of despair are much more deeply rooted than only the superficial contracts issue that rears its ugly head from time to time.
This is not to say that the various cricket boards from around the world haven’t had their own set of woes, with West Indies, the situation is in a spiral and going anywhere but up. Almost exponentially, the problems are getting magnified with each passing day, and gone are the days when hope could be used as an excuse or a tool for resurrection.
The recent impasse has already seen a trading of verbal volleys from the two sides, the West Indies Cricket Board and the players’ representatives, the WIPA. Not a day has passed since this particular edition of the controversy first broke out, when the two sides haven’t exhibited the tendencies to catfight; naming of alternate squads, losing two successive Test matches to a team which had earlier won one out of their 60 games, calls for apology – from both sides – and mock apologies, followed by calls to stop playing cricket, and regular dosage of blame and counter-blames, to the extent of one calling the other devoid of any organisational sense and getting responded back in kind has taken the sport in the region to newer depths of despair for the West Indies. Incidentally, the ICC has finally woken up and decided that it is ‘worried about the situation’. Of course, a weakened West Indian team for the Champions trophy could hit their bottom-lines, isn’t it?
So, where was the ICC when the preposterous ground at the Sir Vivian Richards stadium in England was deemed fit to play and then abandoned exactly ten balls into the game because of an outfield that would give most of the rain-inflicted roads in Mumbai, a rain for its money? This hadn’t been a one-off either. 12 years ago, the Sabina Park pitch had had been so dangerous that it had not taken the umpires more than ten minutes more than half hour to abandon the game. Clearly, the Presidents and the executive committee of the West Indian board had changed this time around, but the lackadaisical attitude hadn’t budged from its former position, so hadn’t their ability to take egg on their face with the smile of a programmed robot. And the ICC? Lesser said the better about them.
The contracts issue has its germination, to an extent, in the Allen Stanford sponsorship row, where the West Indian cricket board, seemed to have sold the same rights twice and to different entities. The deal that the WICB had with their own sponsors, Digicel, was ‘team that represents, purports to represent or could reasonably be perceived as representing the West Indies is covered by the terms of Digicel’s exclusive sponsorship deal.’ Yet, the WICB sold all the rights associated with the Stanford game to another firm, and to rub salts into the matter, it was a rival telecommunications company to Digicel.
Digicel had then gone to court and won the case, that disallowed the WICB from allowing any other sponsors from making it to the Stanford 20-20 tournament, thus losing the cricket board not only the sponsors’ money but also millions in lawsuit fees and fines.
This callous attitude played its part in no uncertain terms in the backing out of the sponsors from the two first class tournaments in the region, Carib Beer from the one-dayers and KFC from the T20s, losing the board another million or so. And getting back to the current crisis, why would Digicel want to spend their sponsorship millions on a second-string side that gets beaten by all, but watched by none, should have been within the realms of the discussions over the past two weeks; unless of course the WICB have managed to unearth another Stanford who could dole out the dollars like he owned the World Bank.
There has been quite a worry about West Indies going the Zimbabwe way and the concerns, as highlighted above, are genuine. Let us not forget that the finances, world over, are crunched up to the extent that sponsors or advertisers have had no option but to cut back on their spend, and even while spending the cash, they have become far more judicious than before. So, a behaviour so seeped in indifference could lose the West Indian board a lot more than what they have so far, paving way rather easily for what the worry is. With a lack of proper infrastructure, Zimbabwean cricket is a far cry from the days of the Streaks, Flowers and the Johnsons; instead the side struggles to put games across most of the top Associate nations too.
One chain of thought is that some of the issues that have arisen are due to the fact that there has been quite a lot of in-fighting between the different countries that represent the West Indies. Formed of a group of sovereign islands, it is only natural that each of these countries would have their own set of interests, and hence from this premise, the most obvious conclusion that has been drawn is that the best way forward is to have each of the countries within the West Indies play as a single team, rather than having them merged together, just like it happens in all the other sports. So, there would be a different Jamaican team and a different one from Guyana, or for that matter Trinidad or Antigua!
The maroon of the uniform could just be replaced by its various hues.
