This week we carry two commentaries on cricket, related to a controversy that erupted in the regional media in the past two weeks over comments made by Chief Executive of the West Indies Cricket Board, Dr. Ernest Hilaire. The first is excerpts of a press release issued by the Caribbean Studies Association, and the second is reflections by Anton Allahar, Past president of the CSA (2007-2008) and Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario.
Statement from Caribbean Studies Association
The Caribbean Studies Association, (CSA) a professional organization made up largely of scholars but including activists, artists and writers, recently held its 35th annual conference in Barbados (May 24-28). The CSA sees its mandate as providing an intellectual space for the free expression of ideas and frank exchanges concerning issues affecting us as a region. In this regard, a special plenary on Nationalism and the Future of West Indies Cricket was held that was open to the Barbadian public. It was moderated by Sir Hilary Beckles, historian, cricket scholar and Principal of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, and featured UWI lecturer Justin Robinson, distinguished cricketer Rawle Brancker and Ernest Hilaire, Chief Executive of the West Indies Cricket Board.
In his presentation, Dr. HIlaire insisted that we must situate the challenges the West Indies team currently faces in a wider context. He shared with the audience the astonishingly high turnover of regional players introduced to international cricket in the past decade, and argued that the overall West Indies team performance is not a simple matter of some individuals not playing well, and who need to be rotated off the team. Dr. Hilaire’s point was that the challenge is structural, partly reflecting the uneven global playing field we face today, including advances in technology that also alter how the game is played and how one develops strategies for winning regularly. It also reflects the problems we face in the region today, and this second observation seems to be the one that has precipitated the outcry across the region last week, in particular comments that were made with regard to the educational levels of our cricketers and the need to seriously address this, as well as to find ways to combat the lure of instant gratification and easy money.
The vigorous panel discussion has since been followed by an avalanche of comments on call-in radio shows in Barbados, on websites like caribbeancricket.com and the regional media. Many have singled out Ernest Hilaire, for attack and condemnation, some going as far as to call for his resignation. A statement issued by the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) has called for Dr. Hilaire to apologise, describing statements made by him as ‘outrageous, disrespectful and revealing’, and as engendering disrespect and contempt for the team.
We urge the regional media not to be carried away by easy soundbites, which have misrepresented the thrust of Dr. Hilaire’s invaluable contribution to the CSA panel discussion on the future of West Indies cricket. For anyone listening in the audience that night, there was no mistaking his profound commitment to West Indies cricket. This was clearest when he spoke of the High Performance Cricket Centre that will soon open in Barbados, which will nurture and cultivate our players in all aspects of and all things related to the game. Investing in our young people is the best way of asking them, in return, to become proud ambassadors and the best our region can offer. Dr. Hilaire’s declaration, that we need to make a solid, sustainable and lasting investment in our region’s human resources, was one that was applauded by all present. There is too little of this investment in today’s Caribbean, and is one of the reasons why our young people leave the region at such alarmingly high rates. This is what made Dr. Hilaire’s position so commendable and so hopeful. It does us all a profound disservice to misrepresent what he asked us to consider last week.
The Wider Context of CricketBy Anton Allahar
At the recently concluded annual conference of the Caribbean Studies Association in Barbados, Dr. Ernest Hilaire, CEO of the WICB, spoke with great passion and verve about our West Indies cricket team, echoing all the pride and disappointments West Indians have felt for the team over the years. His thoughts were sincere and offered in a constructive manner with a view to strengthening the team and enhancing our collective pride. Alas, there are those who prefer to bury their heads in the sand, to blame individual board members or individual cricketers for the long drought we have been experiencing.
While there are always disagreements and alternative takes on board decisions, while even the very best players are sometimes known to be ‘out of form,’ while fans could be fickle, cricket is a team sport and any assessment of the team’s performance must take as its point of departure the wider context. That wider context is the West Indian society and culture to which Dr. Hilaire made reference.
Ours is a dependent capitalist region where the young people have imbibed all the narrow, narcissistic behaviours that are associated with the flashiness of North American and Western European sporting events and their stars. It is a reality in which instant gratification is mixed with materialist and individualist sensibilities, and where our young players have come to measure their worth in dollar terms. This is not to blame the individual players, but rather to understand the soil out of which they spring.
What Dr. Hilaire was referring to when he raised the question of education at the level of the team is absolutely essential. To say that other international teams are also less than fully literate is not the solution. If our players are not academically prepared we cannot take solace in the fact that others’ players are similarly bereft of education and sophistication. But what is more, Dr Hilaire was pointing to the fact that raw talent alone is no longer sufficient to compete at the highest levels of cricketing encounters. For apart from personal discipline, which is intimately tied to one’s level of educational preparation and one’s understanding of the role of self sacrifice in the service of excellence, there is the fact that other teams and their coaches and managers are into scientific management and training, and essaying techniques to perfect performance that are not accessible to the uneducated and the undisciplined.
When colonial governments made public education free and mandatory to the population at large, it was not because they had the welfare of colonial subjects at heart, but rather because the level of technological development in sugar production – and other areas – meant that brutalized and illiterate workers (e.g., former slaves) could no longer enable the British to compete effectively on the market with those whose sugar was being produced by more educated and disciplined wage workers, who could calculate temperature in degrees, crystallization by weight, chemical alkalization, and the operation of advanced physical apparatuses in the boiler houses etc. Slaves were deliberately kept illiterate (it was even illegal to teach them to read and write) so the transition from slave labour to wage labour meant that a new regime of worker was needed, and those who chose to stick with slave labour were soon beaten out of the market.
There is a lesson here for our West Indies cricket and it is one that Dr Hilaire hinted at. Of course we all remember the jokes we made about some of our past cricketers whose academic exploits were not the greatest, but who went on to define the commanding heights of the way the game was played; but those days are gone. Tactics, techniques, strategy, cunning and so on, are all part of today’s game and they inform managers, coaches, captains, vice captains and players. Those who think they can compete successfully without these are sadly mistaken. Cricket is more than a game, it is a way of life. For West Indians it is also played off the field and deals with such social and cultural phenomena as race, slavery, indentureship, empire, freedom, independence and sovereignty. What do today’s highly paid players know of this?
When Dr. Hilaire made reference to the lack of education among our young players he was indicting the wider society where education has come to take a back seat to making money by any means possible. That wider society is the product of globalization and Americaniza-tion that has seen the glory of a five day test match reduced to the 50-over games and now Twenty-20 encounters. In the process major thinking skills are lost and techniques are redefined as “vooping” has come to replace batting.
Where did this come from? The Americani-zation of the game: quick, flashy, hard-hitting, big money, corporate endorsements, TV rights, clear winners and losers. The days when Lance Gibbs could bowl five straight maiden overs to Colin Cowdrey and be regarded as high cricket drama are long gone and we are all poorer for it. Dr. Hilaire’s intervention reminded me of the calypso “Little Black Boy,” where Gypsy was pointing out the same problems and issues with our youth and for which he was roundly assailed for ‘picking on the little black boy.’ Like Gypsy, Ernest Hilaire was a whistle blower, and as we know, they are not always appreciated.
