Dear Editor,
Darren Bravo and a few other batsmen made it seem a little better in the second Test. By the way, I cannot resist pointing out how valuable and un-outable Chanderpaul would have been on that placid Melbourne pitch.
However, as it is, taken together, the two recent Tests against Australia have been a humiliation. I do not think this is a great Australian team yet in two Tests they scored 1313 runs and only lost 10 wickets (131 per wicket) whereas we scored 924 runs and lost 38 wickets (24 per wicket) ‒ Gabriel not batting in the first Test. This is the sort of horrible differential we used to inflict on others, not endure ourselves.
Often I could not bear to watch. Our bowling was terrible. I remember our glory days and figuratively I wept. It is not so long ago we bestrode the cricket world like no other team has ever done before ‒ and, I point out defiantly, will ever do again.
I am sure it is true that the WICB cannot be blamed entirely for the precipitous decline in our standing in the cricket world. In a recent issue the Economist comments as follows: “Globalisation is one culprit. In the 1980s, national Test teams were seen as the pinnacle of the sport. But the advent of for-profit domestic club leagues playing shorter Twenty20(T20) games, particularly the Indian Premier League (IPL) has lured players away from Test cricket … But the main explanation for the Windies’ collapse is that their golden age was unsustainable. Three of the world’s six leading Test sides are from rich countries (England, Australia and New Zealand). Two more (India and Pakistan) have gigantic populations. Some decline was probably inevitable.”
But surely no one can doubt that maladministration has also been to blame. And, sadly, the outdated structure of governance in West Indies cricket has consistently defied fundamental reform. God knows there have been efforts to effect fundamental change. I remember some time after P J Patterson, Alister McIntyre and myself presented our report in respect of the governance of West Indies cricket in 2008 a WICB insider said to me only half jokingly: “Ian, let me tell you what happen. They call Curtly in and they call Joel in and they put Curtly to stan’ on Joel’s shoulder and they los’ away your big recommendation on the highest shelf they could find!” The Wilkin report suffered the same fate.
The WICB has not effected a fundamental change in the governance of our cricket. Its response to the findings and recommendations of the Caricom Review Panel on Cricket Governance (the Barriteau report) is forthright in rejecting the recommendation that the WICB dissolve itself and detailed in putting its side of the case. The Caricom Review Panel will presumably wish to examine and comment on this comprehensive defence by the WICB. One can only hope that this does not all lead to a prolonged impasse during which our cricket will stagnate and suffer further setbacks.
One good thing is that the Board no longer seems to be waving the banner of “no political interference.” They must have come to realise there is all the difference in the world between “political interference” in the running of cricket and legitimate governmental intervention in an issue of vital public importance. They must have taken to heart a recent ruling by the Supreme Court of India in a case involving the Indian Cricket Board:
“any organisation or entity that has such pervasive control over the game and its affairs as can make dreams end up in smoke or come true cannot be said to be undertaking any private activity. The functions of the Board are clearly public functions which … remain in the nature of the public functions, no matter discharged by a society registered under the Registration of Societies Act. Suffice it to say that if the government not only allows an autonomous/private body to discharge functions which it could in law take over or regulate but even lends its assistance to such a non-government body to undertake such functions which by their very nature are public functions, it cannot be said that the functions are not public functions or that the entity discharging the same is not answerable on the standards generally applicable to judicial review of State action.”
Perhaps a way forward can quickly be found in the conciliatory words at the end of the WICB’s response to the Review Panel in which the Board accepts “the need for further change” and promises to reconsider the governance recommendations of the Patterson and Wilkin reports. This should be done with utmost speed. In this respect it is difficult to understand why the WICB cannot see their way to the sort of fundamental reform effected by New Zealand in the governance of their cricket about two years ago which basically put independent directors in charge. Look what New Zealand has achieved since then!
I am in despair about West Indies cricket ‒ but come January 3 and forever there I will be hoping, praying and urging the boys on. I know they are trying their best.
Yours faithfully,
Ian McDonald
