Austin 'Jack' Warner
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):
FIFA VICE-PRESIDENT Jack Warner believes batting star Brian Lara made a mistake by refusing the West Indies Cricket Board's offer to make himself available for the first Test against South Africa.
Warner, one of the most influential figures in world football, said Lara should have accepted the board's offer and then fought the cause of the six other Cable and Wireless-sponsored players from the inside.
He expressed this sentiment while delivering the feature address at the Trinidad & Tobago Football Federation Super League awards at the Clico Hospitality Suite, Queen's Park Oval, on Tuesday night.
"I feel that if there was any individual who could have solved the current situation and should have, that individual was Brian Lara," Warner said.
GOING IN AND PLAYING
"But he cannot solve the problem by staying out of the cricket. He has to do it by going in and playing."
Lara, who also holds a personal endorsement contract with Cable & Wireless, was cleared to play while Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Fidel Edwards, Dwayne Bravo, Dwayne Smith and Ravi Rampaul were ruled ineligible for selection to the West Indies team.
After its legal team perused the contracts, the WICB indicated that they were in conflict with the Digicel team sponsorship. Lara's contract, however, was signed back in 2003 and deemed as a "pre-existing" contract.
Warner pointed out that Lara had failed to assume the role of leadership when leadership needed him and also said that Lara's colleagues should have encouraged him to go ahead and play.
"Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan and the others should have had the guts to tell him to accept the offer, go in and fight for us from the inside," Warner said.
Warner, also president of CONCACAF, also rapped regional governments for the state of cricket in the region.
DIFFICULT TIMES
"We in this country, and particularly in the region, are going through some difficult times, particularly in sport and at this particular time in cricket," Warner argued.
"If anything has shown the impotence of our Caribbean governments, it is the current cricketing impasse."
He added: "They have been impotent in terms of having a common tariff for the region, impotent on getting a common passport, agreeing on work permits and a regional airline.
"But for me, the epitome of their impotence is in the present cricketing impasse."
Warner also warned that with the World Cup two years away, the region stood to be embarrassed by the sponsorship fiasco.
"After they have spent all this money on a World Cup which will be a dream, they have failed to understand that they can come to terms with the present impasse by asking the sponsors to relieve themselves of the sponsorship and pick up the slack," Warner continued.
"They have failed to understand or realise they can set the pattern for any success that comes in 2007."
