THE euphoria that swept through the cricketing Caribbean following last Sunday’s men’s team’s victory snatched from the jaws of defeat in the World T20 final in Kolkata has been accompanied by the heated, long-running debate over the future of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).
The two were simultaneously linked at the presentation formalities by captain Darren Sammy’s impassioned denunciation of the WICB as he received the trophy for the second time in three tournaments. Dwayne Bravo’s subsequent descriptions of the WICB as ‘the most unprofessional board in the world’ and president Dave Cameron as ‘immature’, ‘small minded’ and ‘arrogant’ added fuel to the fire.
They were combative words that drew the inevitably sharp responses from Cameron and his vice-president Emmanuel Nanthan.
Cameron released a statement on behalf of the WICB, apologizing to the ‘millions of fans who witnessed it…for what could be deemed inappropriate comments’ by Sammy. He went further with a typically biting tweet to the captain: ‘When is the last time a critic paid one of your bills? Always remember that when you start to give your energy.’
Nanthan termed Sammy’s reproach ‘irrelevant, demeaning, insulting and unfortunate’. A few days later, perhaps mindful of Sammy’s widespread popularity, he claimed he wasn’t really criticizing him as they always had a father and son relationship. As manager of the Windward Islands youth team, he asserted that he had gone against the selectors and the president of the Windwards board to get Sammy, then a reserve, into the 11. It was a baffling non-sequitur.
As Cameron was making his unsolicited apology and dispatching his tweet, the St.Lucia government was preparing for the return of their two nationals in the champion team, Sammy, and opener Johnson Charles. The culmination was the renaming of the Beausejour stadium, venue for