West Indies cricket

More questions to ponder

Fazeer Mohammed

September 1, 2008

	Will the WICB's new initiatives contribute to a revival of West Indies cricket? © Getty Images

So now we have more talk and more plans, even as we wait with an increasing sense of despair for real evidence of something - anything - that will at least slow the pace of the slide to irrelevance.

Why they would choose a Sunday to issue a press release, I don't know, but now most of us have the luxury of the post-Independence Day holiday to absorb the latest missive from the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).

Maybe, as much as it attempted to offer some clarity and direction for the coming seasons, the release, dispensed as it was in the name of Dr Donald Peters, was also intended as confirmation that the chief executive officer is fully ensconced once again in his substantive role after it seemed for some time that he would be on his way out together with fellow executive, Tony Deyal, over the leaking of information relating to WICB president Julian Hunte's office in his native St Lucia.

Emphasising that there will be a "full focus" on players and their development in coming seasons, the key elements of the release via WICB media officer Philip Spooner are the re-expansion of the regional season, the re-establishment of the West Indies A team and the development of a new Memorandum of Understanding with the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) that will cover as many as 80 Caribbean cricketers, a significant increase from the current MoU which relates only to players selected in the senior West Indies squad.

Most followers of the game would be aware that the first two items, assuming they come to fruition, will be experiencing a reincarnation, and can hardly be described as either controversial or revolutionary, for issues relating to the quantity and quality of cricket played among our territories, together with the difficulty experienced in cricketers making the transition from regional to international level competition, have been ventilated for years.

It is the final point, though, for which we await a reaction from Dinanath Ramnarine. Given that he is a non-executive member of the WICB, it is only reasonable to expect that the WIPA president and CEO was consulted on this initiative which will result in all top-level regional cricketers being retained by the Board as professionals with all the attendant contractual details relating to salaries, match fees and performance-related incentives.

Still, given the way things go at the level of regional cricket administration, you really can't take anything for granted. I mean, less than two weeks ago, Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board president Deryck Murray was making it clear that the local body could not wait on the parent organisation to get going with an effective revival plan. Yet Murray is an executive member of the WICB!

I wonder if he is prepared for some licks from the bossman and other Board members when they meet again in five weeks' time for criticising so publicly the administration of which he is an integral member. Then again, after you've faced up to Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee in full cry on lightning-fast Australian pitches, almost everything else can be fended off with a minimum of fuss.

Given their track record, only the perennially optimistic will hold out much hope for this latest callaloo of recommendations getting anywhere close to being even a part of the elusive recipe for a West Indian revival. The concept of the expanded regional season first appeared in 1997, when the general impression was that it was too disjointed and too long, therefore struggling to sustain interest.

West Indies A teams hosted visiting squads and also toured, as recently as 2006, while there was also a West Indies B team together with the A side of one of the other top-level countries participating in our regional season in the early years of this decade. Those innovations were discontinued, primarily because of a lack of financial support, and it remains to be seen what effect their re-emergence, together with an MoU covering as many as 80 players, will have on the World Cup-boosted revenues of the WICB, unless sponsors can be attracted to support these ventures.

By the way, what happens if the new MoU meets a few roadblocks from WIPA? Additionally, should most contributors at the "Stakeholders' Conference" in just over six weeks' time demand that it is the structure of the WICB more than the structure of the regional season that is in need of urgent reform, will their concerns be brushed aside in pursuit of a plan of action that has apparently already been decided?

There are too many questions, too many inconsistencies, to feel anything other than indifference over this latest series of recommendations being trumpeted as a way out of the mire.

Not the least of those inconsistencies is Peters' assertion that, "It is evident by our recent performances that our players need to learn to bat for longer periods and make the right decisions at all times when they are on the field."

How will that be possible with so much emphasis now being placed on Allen Stanford's Twenty20 bonanza, and where are the incentives to prevent talented young players from taking the easier route to considerably more money at the expense of the longer form of the game, the traditional version that develops the very qualities the CEO hopes to see more of among the current crop of West Indies batsmen.

Not for the first time, we just sit and wonder. Not hope. Not expect. Just wonder.

Fazeer Mohammed is a writer and broadcaster in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad

© Trinidad & Tobago Express

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