OBSCURED by the distractions of the current double-tour from hell, a significant appointment by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has slipped under the radar.
While attention was centred on the Florida Frolic prior to the series in India and New Zealand, on the subsequent clash of dates, the protracted international travel, the belated arrivals, the needless visa confusion, the repeated collapses and the heavy defeats, Richard Pybus, a 49-year-old Englishman, was announced as the new Director of Cricket, a prominent position.
Pybus is not a familiar cricket name in these parts; his work as coach and development planner has been concentrated in Pakistan, briefly Bangladesh, and far more successfully, with provincial teams in South Africa where he was twice named coach of the year.
Preempting the inevitable question of why not a West Indian, WICB chief executive Michael Muirhead commented that Pybus “emerged after a rigorous international recruitment process which saw a diverse range of applicants both from the Caribbean and internationally”.
It was, he said, “a major coup.”
He took up his post on November 1 and has already presented a report outlining his immediate strategy. It is an imposing portfolio.
According to the WICB, it “concentrated on the historical context of West Indies player production and where the system currently is.
“He will be implementing a system review from feeder systems at grassroots level all the way through first-class cricket to the international side,” it added. “It will include an overall plan for development and schools cricket through to the West Indies senior team.”
Pybus’s title indicates that he is to be in charge of all aspects of the regional game. As he would have gleaned from the results in India and New Zealand and of reports he would have read and heard of the myriad problems hindering first-class, club and schools development, he surely appreciates the tough challenges he faces.
His immediate priority concerns the India-New Zealand humiliations. There is a pressing need, once the tour of New Zealand is over, to summons separate meetings with head coach, captain, vice-captain, team manager and selectors to hear their reasons for the dismal events over the past two months and their recommendations of what needs to be done to put things right. In other words, an inquisition that will determine his own conclusions.
Although he is an employee of the WICB, his record implies that he won’t allow board members, even as high as president, to interfere with his objectives.
He had three stints as Pakistan coach, each ending in a falling out; he called the team manager during one “a bumbling old idiot.”
He quit the Bangladesh post after a disagreement over his contract.
He would know that key recommendations of weighty reports commissioned by the WICB itself, the foremost headed by the former Jamaica Prime Minister P.J.Patterson, were rejected. He is unlikely to stay very long if his are similarly treated.
Pybus once described coaching Pakistan as “the toughest job in world cricket”. He has now taken on another.
THE valid objections to the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) suspension of Shane Shillingford is not so much against its finding that his elbow is bent at more that its stipulated 15 degrees in delivery (it became increasingly more apparent as the fatigue of 187 overs in four Tests innings in India and New Zealand took its toll) but its failure also to move against others, past and present, with similar kinks.
Andy Roberts’ protest last week was made with the same sharp precision that earned him 198 Test wickets.
“You have pelters who have world records who they are not calling and you have pelters who are top of the ICC rankings today who they are not calling,” he said.
Their identities were unambiguous – Muttiah Muralitheran, the Sri Lankan twirler with the Test record 800 wickets for whom, for all the ICC’s denials, the allowable flex of 15 degrees was introduced, and Saeed Ajmal, the Pakistan ‘doosra’ specialist who is No.1 on the current ICC bowlers’ rankings.
Michael Holding, Roberts’ equally forthright partner throughout most of his Test career, openly questioned the elbows’ legality of Ajmal and Ajmal’s teammate, off-spinner Mohammed Hafeez, in his tv commentary on Pakistan’s 2011 tour of the West Indies.
This is nothing anyone watching on their screens at home or, indeed, from the stands, cannot see for themselves.
Murali’s action was no-balled three times in Australia by Australian umpires in the 1990s; the third time, in an ODI in Adelaide in 1999, his captain Arjuna Ranatunga threatened to take his team off the field and, with a lawyer and support from the government, successfully argued that umpire Roy Emerson’s decision was restraint of trade. The ICC introduced the implausible protractor solution soon afterwards.
Under it, both Ajmal and Hafeez have been reported but cleared by the ICC.
So why Shillingford and not Ajmal and Hafeez and, according to Roberts, “three or four” among the ICC’s top 10?
Roberts’ explanation is: “They are from countries that have clout and West Indies have no clout in international cricket.”
It is not known whether the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has made representations to the ICC to have every suspect action taken out of the game, not just theirs. In Shillingford’s case, they might want to use the original Sri Lankan threat of “restraint of trade.”
It won’t be the kind of Christmas Shillingford anticipated, even if he is back home in Dominica with support at his family, the government and the people. He has had to repeatedly come back after such setbacks; perhaps he can again but, at 30, his future in the game that has been his life is uncertain.
The dark cloud of controversy has hung over his action since he was a teenager.
He was called by Steve Bucknor, the West Indies’ senior umpire, three times in the Windwards match against the Leewards in the 2001 season (twice from square-leg, once from the bowler’s end). He was not yet 18; figures of seven for 66 against Jamaica on debut in the previous match confirmed his potential as an off-spinner.
In spite of Bucknor’s judgment, he was on the West Indies team to the 2002 Under-19 World Cup in New Zealand and continued to claim plenty of wickets for the Windwards.
West Indies selectors, perhaps wary of exposing him to international umpires, waited until 2010 to pick him again, initially for the ‘A’ team and then for his Test debut against South Africa.
After his first overseas Test, against Sri Lanka in Galle in November that year, the umpires found fault with his action and he was sent to the ICC’s special unit in Perth for remedial action.
Once approved, he returned to the Test team in 2012 against Australia; five or more wickets in an innings and two of ten in the match have followed. He has carried the attack for the last three series.
It is a blow, not just for him but for West Indies cricket. The moral, as it was when fast bowler Jermaine Lawson’s flawed action ended his career, is for the deliveries of all emerging bowlers to be monitored to ensure that they remain legal.
