The West Indies Players Association has denied a contention by Sir Hilary Beckles that controversial remarks he made in relation to Jamaican star batsman Christopher Gayle were taken out of context.
Sir Hilary, Principal of the UWI Cave Hill Campus, made the statement in an interview that appears in today’s Barbados Nation and is reproduced below this story.
Following the publication of Sir Hilary’s statement, WIPA this morning issued the following statement
“Under fire from the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) for remarks contained in a public lecture he gave in St Kitts earlier this week, the principal of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies said his discourse had been “unethically edited and its contents manipulated to achieve an unpleasant special purpose”.
“This is not the case as you will see”.
Among other things, WIPA provided the relevant portion of the transcript which follows:
“IN 1948 Frank Worrell refused to go to with the West Indies team to India on tour. The argument he gave in 1948 was that he wanted to be paid the salary of a professional sportsman. The argument he gave was that all of his teammates were men who owned stocks and shares in plantations and companies and they didn’t need a salary because many of them were the corporate elite of the region and they were the owners of wealth but he had a family to support and he needed the salary. And of course he was not given that salary and he did not go. But, he continued to push for cricket as an enterprise that offered not just status, but offered financial security to those persons who were celebrated as as heroes. (57:23)
“So finally then, what are the images we have of West Indies cricket and our heroes? Well, the images before us are as follows, that Frank Worrell is the Father of the Nation, ah, Sobers is the King of Cricket, ah, Clive Lloyd is the Statesman, ah, Richards is the General of the army, am, Brian Lara is the Prince, and Chris Gayle is the Don. And, and these these, these are very interesting images ah, in, in, in , indeed because the the movement from the father to the Don and, and and those who follow him and his cohort in the team do relate to him as their Don, and he has brought it is said, the Don-manship into how ‘tings’ operate in the team, and what the West Indies Board is trying to do at the moment is to uproot this Don-manship out of the culture in much the same way that the Jamaican people are trying to uproot Dudus from their politics. So the comparisons are very interesting indeed. (58:48)
“Now how do we put all of this finally, into context? There is no doubt that there is a younger generation of cricketers that is emerging and the younger generation is altogether unlike those who currently represent the West Indies team. It is not that the system has produced a consciousness that reproduces itself in the linear fashion. These young players are reverting, they are looking to the Greenidges and the Haynes and the Lloyds and the Holdings as their heroes. So these current younger players are bypassing their immediate predecessors and they are looking at an earlier generation and why is this? Am, I spent a fair amount of time interviewing some of the younger players, and especially those who have just won in Dubai, the West Indies Under-19 team, and this West Indies Under-19 team is some interesting collection of very smart and bright young men and there is a different quality of personality at the moment. They do not wish to be like Chris Gayle, they do not wish to be like am, ah, Marlon Samuels, they wish to be like Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards and Michael Holding. They are seeing their heroes at an earlier time, they want to play for the West Indies, they want to rebuild West Indies cricket, they want to make it great again and this is what they want to do. (1:00:20)”
Sir Hilary says Gayle words taken out of context
(Barbados Nation) Sir Hilary Beckles has insisted that he “admires” Chris Gayle as a cricketer and his reference to the former West Indies Test captain as a “don” was a reflection of public perception – not his personal view.
Under fire from the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) for remarks contained in a public lecture he gave in St Kitts earlier this week, the principal of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies said his discourse had been “unethically edited and its contents manipulated to achieve an unpleasant special purpose”.
At the lecture delivered at the University of the West Indies in St. Kitts, Sir Hilary said he had presented “an assessment of the public images that surround some of our former captains from Sir Frank Worrell to present.
“I stated clearly that ‘these are the images before us’. At no time did I say that I believe these images to be true,” Sir Hilary said in a statement issued yesterday.
“I insisted, however, as a social scientist that I have a duty to analyze these images, how they are constructed and how society reacts to them.
“I know that Sir Garry Sobers is not a king, Sir Vivian Richards a general, Brian Lara a prince or Chris Gayle a don because they are all fine professional cricketers whom I admire, but these metaphoric images are based on public observations and perception.”
As such, he said the aim of his references were to assess the impact of these images upon each generation.
“I consider Chris Gayle an amazing cricketer, whom I personally celebrate, but my lecture mentioned the public image that surrounds his leadership.”
He concluded: “It saddens me that this manipulation and abuse of my academic work to meet ends clearly not intended are obviously designed to distract from the task at hand – that is, diagnosing the crisis in West Indies cricket and developing policies to fix it; also, seeking to assess how we as West Indians will treat with the issue of our cricketers rejecting the West Indies cricket team.”
Although not making any direct reference to WIPA, Sir Hilary’s statement came in the wake of a stern rebuke by the Players Association, which has called for his resignation or expulsion as a director of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) for what it deemed as unfair references relating to the former West Indies captain.
In a letter to the WICB’s board of directors, WIPA recommended that Sir Hilary should have no further dealings with West Indies cricket, saying that the “organization and its members would find it difficult to have any confidence in a person who appears blatantly prejudiced against some of the players”.
