As we sit right now in the middle of a firestorm in the media and elsewhere enveloping the West Indies Cricket Board following the abrupt cancellation of the India series by our team, one is left to wonder how long it is going to take to convince us that our regional cricket arrangement needs urgent revision. This anachronistic cobbling together of a team made up of selected players from several national teams may have worked for a while in the days of the British, but since the flowering of independence across the region the WICB has been a disaster. Going back to the days of the former Jamaican President Pat Rousseau, and coming forward to his present compatriot David Cameron, the WICB has been calamity on top of calamity. The examples abound: the American stock market fiasco; the firing and re-hiring of Brian Lara; the inability to book airline seats for players summoned to England; the rifts with the association representing the players; and the most recent turmoil over the cancelled India tour. The shouts and complaints from respected cricket experts (Tony Cozier, Rudi Webster, Reds Perreira, Clive Lloyd, Mike Atherton, etc) have been running for some time and their dissatisfaction with the WICB is clear.
But one does not have to be a cricket expert to see that the present arrangement must change to tackle the two fundamental dilemmas facing the WICB. The first of these is the fact that the organization is not accountable or responsible to anyone other than itself. This flaw has been repeatedly emphasized by cricket and management experts – very recently again by Rudi Webster – but the condition remains unchanged. Currently we are seeing Vincentian Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves attempting to settle the tour cancellation dispute, and while he’s been received somewhat amicably the WICB is not obliged to follow any mandate from Mr Gonsalves, or any other leader, with regard to its management of our cricket. The only voices Mr Cameron has to pay attention to are those of the Board members of the organization over which he presides as Chairman – in other words, no one. Indeed, as this is being written, even some of Mr Gonsalves’s declarations, after meeting with Mr Cameron, seem to be in doubt.
The second factor affecting the WICB is the substantial impact of insularity which comes strongly into play in any effort to form and run our regional bodies. One would have thought that by now, our history in the Caribbean with such formations would have shown us pellucidly that these institutions, assuming an inclination for regional accord, have in fact hit one insularity road block after another. Go back in political time to the Standing Closer Association Committee (SCAC) in 1947; go back to the vaunted West Indies Federation, to Carifesta, to Caricom, to the EPA of recent years; consider the Single Market and Economy, and the one-currency idea, and now the contentious Appeal Court. Remember that in the very first year of Federation, there was acrimony between Jamaica and Trinidad over the latter’s intention to build an oil refinery in Jamaica, and that coming up to recent times, the same two nations are again wrangling publicly, this time over restraint of trade. In the midst of deliberations about restitution for India over the failed tour, we are hearing loudly from Jamaica that they will not be entertaining any Eastern Caribbean request for contributions to such a fund. The problems in these regional efforts are many and longstanding and severe. Why then do we continue to expect that the very same model will work efficiently and amicably in the case of cricket?
To be fair to the WICB, this insularity factor, cited in recent times by Michael Holding, among others, must be the source of constant travail for the organization. To be dealing with some six different national groupings, each obviously with their own priorities and agendas, has to be creating almost daily hurdles to be cleared or misunderstandings to be resolved for WICB staff. One only has to read the various regional newspapers to see the strong “home” flavour reaction taken on each WICB decision. When, for instance, Sarwan doesn’t make the team, the Trinidad press takes little notice, but the Guyana newspapers are in an uproar. The dismissing of Ramdin as West Indies captain didn’t merit much ink in our newspapers; it made headlines in Trinidad. Let us not delude ourselves; those differing repercussions are reaching the WICB as clearly as waves coming ashore on our beaches.
The dilemma, of course, as well as the explanation for why the insularity matter continues to haunt us, is that perhaps we are essentially stuck with the WICB problem. Despite two or three independent examinations in recent years, no solution acceptable to the WICB has come along. The West Indies team structure of a group representing several nations is a very unusual one, but it is the one conceived for us in colonial times and it is all we have today – we remain a region of nations. In the Caribbean, we are also stuck with our insularity; given our history, that condition is likely to be part of us forever. Indeed, in the immediate term, as we seek to address the question of accountability – which might help reduce some WICB incompetence – again from the regional standpoint, the question would immediately be, “accountable to whom”? One would think that time would become a factor in all this, simply wearing down the matter in its passage, but that does not appear to be the case. Loving our cricket as we do, we are apparently simply resigned to waiting on the foreshore for the next WICB wave to hit.
