Whenever the next West Indies team is composed either for a domestic series or overseas engagement, a mandatory aspect of its preparations must be a detailed study and recounting of the glories of its cricketing history. This could entail reading Hilary Beckles’ two-volume oeuvre on the Development of West Indies Cricket, Manley’s A History of West Indies Cricket, the lucid test match and series reports of Tony Cozier and live accounts from the likes of the peerless Sobers, Kanhai, Lloyd et al.
Were that all to be absorbed by the aspirants to the halcyon days of West Indies cricket, the shocking revolt in India last week by the present West Indian captain Dwayne Bravo and his band would be unlikely to recur. The rise of West Indian cricket from its earliest years was both a perpetual flowering of natural talent that was honed on hard scrabble existence without much complaint and a genuine desire to break free from the shackles of colonialism and class and other prejudices. That weighty legacy that has to be proudly carried forward was shamelessly reduced in Dharamsala to the most vulgar of denominators – money – ironically on the day the team met with the austere Dalai Lama.
The details of the three-way dispute between the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) and senior members of the current West Indies team are immaterial at this point. What is at issue is the disgracing of West Indian cricket, the letting down of the virtual nation that has evolved over decades of the game and the body blow to the fans of the game.
What rankles even more is that the direct cause of the revolt was an internal dispute between WIPA and the senior players which automatically drew in the plodding WICB. The sequence is clear and Captain Bravo will be at severe pains to justify the actions that he helmed. The agreement between WIPA and the WICB which the senior players are now objecting to was signed on September 19 after which the West Indies proceeded to India on their tour. Sometime after September 19th Mr Bravo and his colleagues determined that this agreement was not to their liking even though it had been formalized by their recognized representative, WIPA. It was then the immediate responsibility of these players and WIPA to thrash out their differences in recognition that an agreement with the WICB could not be easily abrogated particularly in light of an imminent and important tour.
This, however, appeared not to have troubled Captain Bravo one whit. The first inkling that West Indies fans had of trouble afoot was from reports prior to the first one-day match that a strike might be called and that the game might not even be held. That points to the most shocking and mercenary of tactics. When did Captain Bravo first develop ill feelings towards this agreement and why wasn’t there a serious attempt at a holding accord before departure from the West Indies for India? As important as his role is, one would have expected that Captain Bravo and his fellow dissenters would have taken the time to acquaint themselves with the agreement prior to its signing and surely on the day of the signing or shortly thereafter. Perhaps T20 matches got in the way. That might explain it.
It should not have taken 18 days for the Captain to play his card on the eve of the first one-day match in Kochi. That reeks of an attempt to force the WICB to alter the agreement which as far as it was concerned had been properly concluded with the players’ representative. It appears that intervention by an Indian board official enabled the first match to be played. Not satisfied with the first match brinkmanship, Mr Bravo et al took the ultimate step on the day of the fourth match even though there appeared to have been attempts by the WICB to negotiate by sending a high-level team to India.
The withdrawal of the players from the tour is wholly without merit and a crude attempt to overturn a properly concluded deal. The players’ dispute was with Mr Wavell Hinds of WIPA and it was their responsibility to seek dialogue on the agreement with WIPA and the WICB but without jeopardising the tour which was itself the product of an agreement between the WICB and the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Captain Bravo naively assumed that in the land of his Indian Premier League (IPL) triumphs that he had some special status and that his adversaries would keel over. He has overreached and miscalculated and there will be repercussions that he has not yet discerned.
We could least be interested in whether the IPL sanctions Captain Bravo et al. What consumes West Indians is the further setback to the prospects of the team in the backdrop of the upcoming one-day World Cup, the roiling of relations with the Indian board and the possibility that other cricketing countries would reconsider touring arrangements.
Continuing to disappoint with dismal results on field and languishing at the bottom in the two key forms of the game, one would have thought that Captain Bravo and his West Indian players would have absorbed the need to shut out any discord and concentrate on bat and ball. It seems, however, that their key and critical concern is the dollar and they were prepared to risk everything for it.
How this shambles is going to be salvaged is not straightforward. The ringleaders of the revolt should be dismissed and the WICB should immediately set about recomposing a team and trying to instil the spirit and commitment that has floated hopes and dreams of hundreds of thousands of West Indians since the 1930s. The WICB which is blameworthy for the decrepit state of cricket in the region and numerous administrative blunders also has to do some deep and honest introspecting.
In rebuilding a team, the WICB must carefully address the veritable curse of T20 cricket. It has completely undermined the basis of West Indian cricket with its riches and has spawned a new breed of entrepreneur, not cricketer, interested only in the bottom line and not embracing the task of restoring West Indian cricket to the upper leagues. With a weak structure, power grabbing and insularity radiating from all parts of the Caribbean, the WICB has provided little or no leadership and is responsible in no small part for where we are today. The diet of lucrative T20 cricket has created an easy choice for the West Indian cricketer today. To rein this in, as we have recommended before, the only cricketers who should be permitted to play T20 cricket under the West Indian flag are those who are fully committed to Test and one-day cricket and are performing in these two versions. They should be offered the opportunity to play in maroon caps. The rest can try their luck in the IPL and other auctions.
It is fitting that criticism of Mr Bravo’s actions have come from all parts of the Caribbean and on Saturday from a fellow Trinidadian, former Test batsman Bryan Davis.
He told CMC “You did not deal with your problems before you went on the tour so then deal with it after when you go back home. You certainly cannot abandon the tour in the middle of because of your internal dispute.
“That is selfish, inconsiderate. It lacks integrity. I am sad and disappointed about the turn it took. It was a total shortage of courtesy. There are no redeeming factors.” That covers all of the boundaries.
It is hard to believe that today’s cricketers who have read deeply of the labours of Headley, the exploits of Hall and Griffith, the stunning tied Test match, the imperious reign of the West Indies through the 80s, the splendour of Worrell, Kanhai, Sobers and legions of others, the single-mindedness of Lloyd, the effortless hooking of the fearsome Lillee and Thompson by Fredericks at Perth and victories in the first two world cups would so recklessly and readily bring shame and disrepute to the team. CLR James is apt at this point: “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?”