As this article is being written the West Indies is yet to play its final game in the 2015 instalment of cricket’s most prestigious tournament. Cricket does not come even remotely close to soccer in terms of its global popularity though the passion for the game amongst its followers is every inch as intense; from the millions on the Indian sub-continent to the far fewer numbers here in the Caribbean, the fortunes of the players and the teams is followed with a passion and an intensity that can be frightening.
As has been the case for several years now ‘our boys’ continued to tempt fate in the just concluded offering of the Cricket World Cup, running the risk – on account of their ineptitude and their discipline – of a complete falling out with the long-suffering followers of the game. “Our boys,” it seems, are simply not inclined to take on board the fact that other sporting pursuits compete for the attention of the region…pursuits like the world class performances of the surfeit of athletes who continue to fall out of the woodwork, mostly in Chris Gayle’s country, Jamaica. There are too, the attractions of America’s NBA and the English football Premier League. Cricket no longer monopolizes our attention. Our youngsters are evincing a growing interest in optional sporting pursuits. Much of this is due to the fact that the Westindies have not only stopped being frequent winners but have become predictable losers.
But it is not just their persistent losses on the field play that we who used to worship them find infuriating, it is the fact that the freedom which West Indian cricketers once had to express and enjoy themselves has been taken away, supplanted by a burdensome bureaucracy which, as far as we can tell, is doing nothing to extricate us from the habit of losing…which is what really matters.
Here in Guyana the game itself had nearly been brought to a halt by what, in effect, has been no more than a lawless power struggle amongst men who appear to see cricket as no more than an institutional power base from which, to gravitate to bigger things…or perhaps a private playground. It is almost the same with the region as a whole.
Time was when cricket was the self-expression that transpired on the field of play and which drove us wild with excitement and admiration of those who possessed the skills to deliver that self-expression. These days, cricket is symbolized, by and large, by men in dark suits who talk a lot but often say nothing and the paucity of our performances on the field of play tell the ugly, unpalatable but honest truth about their levels of competence.
In the week when the West Indies – having dragged themselves into the quarter finals – were preparing to face New Zealand the lack of interest in their fortunes was palpable amongst followers of the game across the Caribbean. Not
that spirits would not soar again were they to get past the Kiwis, but up to that point they had simply had enough. It really didn’t matter that much anymore whether they won or lost. Their earlier thoroughly uninspiring performances had dampened the spirits of the Caribbean people to a point where expectations of survival beyond the quarter finals were completely negligible.
What the followers of the game across the region have more-or-less been saying is that while losing is an occupational hazard of playing sport, losing, for the West Indies has become a way of life and one that we seem incapable of getting around. The shame reposes in the fact that there is ‘a glorious past’ with which to compare the contemporary era of abject failure. In other words there is a target at which to aim but the under achievement appears to have become too malignant for us to make a serious effort at recovery.
