It may be the season of peace on earth, goodwill towards men but, for West Indies cricket, such sentiments have long since meant nothing.
Instead, at a time when harmony and understanding should prevail, the confrontation and the acrimony that have become institutionalized within its structure have simply intensified.
Even as efforts are made to develop a new culture, recent events offer little cause for optimism. Short of disbanding and replacing the two warring organizations, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA), and starting afresh, there seems no way out of the constant bickering.
Within the past couple of weeks, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Daren Ganga, two players with long, notable but gradually declining records, have been at the centre of arguments with their territorial boards over their omission from teams for the forthcoming T20 tournament.
The silly stand-off between the WICB and Chris Gayle drags on with no end in sight, so that a player who should be the team’s most valuable asset confines himself to blasting hundreds in T20 leagues wherever he can find them. The latest, but hardly the last, salvo in the controversy has been fired by Sir Viv Richards who has master blasted the board for its handling of the affair.
Daren Sammy, captain for more than a year and originally granted an unprecedented appointment of three series and a World Cup to establish his leadership qualities and his all-round worth, remains unable to prove that he merits a place in the strongest 11. Even so, whatever the circumstances, he has become the butt of more ridicule than anyone in his position deserves.
All the while, WIPA continues to harass the hapless WICB, most recently trumpeting the injunction granted by a Trinidadian judge to prevent the board’s termination of the out-of-date collective bargaining agreement and memorandum of understanding as some sort of triumph.
Its attorneys continue to prepare its US$20 million lawsuit that, if successful, would surely bankrupt the board.
WIPA’s chief, Dinanath Ramnarine, charges that the WICB is intent on running Gayle, Sarwan, Ganga and his organization itself, out of West Indies cricket. While the WICB would certainly breathe easier without the WIPA constantly at its back, WIPA’s every action reveals its intention to break what it perceives to be an inept WICB.
Ramnarine predicts “interesting times” ahead. It is an ominous comment.
Sarwan’s wrath over the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) decision to leave him out of the T20 squad surrounds his fitness, repeatedly an issue for him in recent years. It was the reason he missed the preceding West Indies series in Bangladesh and India and the regional 50-overs tournament.
He described board’s stated reason for his exclusion, that he had played no serious cricket for close to six months and that his fitness remains in doubt, as “total crap”. He had informed the GCB that he was back in training and ready for action again and was furious that his word was not accepted.
On the other hand, the board has stated that it will discipline its former captain for his strongly worded comments (shades of the Gayle saga) and called in the police to investigate after a selector claimed that he was threatened by Sarwan over the phone.
“My career of drama continues,” was Sarwan’s aside as it all got very messy. But he was ultimately contrite enough to state that he looked forward to turning out for Guyana in the four-day tournament in February and March.
Such an eventuality would require his wholehearted commitment to fitness and to the team effort but, if he does play and piles up stacks of runs, his case for a place in the Test team against Australia would be strong (he is 31 and has 15 hundreds and an average of 40 from his 87 Tests). It is all up to him.
The furore over Ganga was initially triggered by Ramnarine’s conspiracy theory that he was among those the WICB, with the support of its affiliate, the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) wanted to remove from West Indies cricket.
Ganga himself initially announced his resignation as successful, long-serving Trinidad and Tobago captain “with great humility and a deep sense of gratitude”. He held the post, he said, “with pride, passion and commitment over the last nine seasons”.
It all seemed straightforward until Ramnarine’s subsequent assertion. That was followed a few days later by what, according to the Express newspaper, was Ganga’s report to the TCCB following the T20 Champions League tournament in India in which he claimed “some unnamed players informed him of TTCB president Azim Bassarath’s intentions to remove him from the captaincy ‘by the end of the year’”.
Bassarath, predictably, poured scorn on the claims – “with incredulity” was how the Express put it.
“The selectors found that he would not have fit into the T20 mix …and simply did not select him,” he said, echoing the view of many observers, not least Ian Bishop on television during the Champions League.
Bassarath added that he was sure Ganga would feature in the other formats, such as the regional four-day tournament that follows the T20 (his 620 runs last season were second only to the 853 that got Marlon Samuels back in the Test side).
Yet there was plenty of opposition to Ganga’s removal as captain and the manner of it.
Brian Lara lent his considerable opinion to the debate. Ganga, he said, had done “a tremendous job”, was nowhere past his best at age 32 and should have had the chance to help groom his successor as captain.
What with one thing and another, peace and good will remain pure fantasy for West Indies cricket as it enters its 2012 season on January 9 in its traditional state of uncertainty.
