Cricket caught in a storm

ON THE BOUNDARY Tony Becca

In 1955, on Australia's first tour of the West Indies, before the first Test at Sabina Park and when Jeffrey Stollmeyer was selected as captain of the West Indies over the more popular Frank Worrell, the call went out by Jamaicans for Jamaica to go it alone.

In 1968 and in 1977, when there was not a Jamaican in the West Indies team for the Test matches against England and Pakistan at Sabina Park, the call went out again, and recently, especially following the Chris Gayle issue and the snubbing of Jamaica for the Australian tour, I have had several telephone calls urging me to blow the trumpet on behalf of the Jamaican people, one more time.

Two Saturday nights ago, at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller came out against going it alone, saying loud and clear, for all to hear, however far away they were, that she did not subscribe to that position.

I fully support the prime minister; and not only for the reasons set out by her, but also because cricket is cricket, because I am a Caribbean man and because Jamaica alone would be too weak to stand up in Test cricket, because Jamaica, apart from being too small, does not have either the will or the resources to improve in order to even compete, and because Jamaica is too small, too poor, financially, to host another Test-playing country for a series of matches.

Today, however, it seems that Jamaica is heading that way following the Gayle issue, the absence of any matches at Sabina Park during the Australian tour, the sudden decision to give Jamaica a few matches during the New Zealand tour and the reaction by the West Indies Cricket Board, through its CEO, to a part of the speech made by the Jamaican prime minister.

Looking at the four issues they all seem to be one, big confusion involving a country finding itself in a corner and simply standing up for its own player, involving a country correctly standing up for its rights, involving a decision which was hastily reached with no discussion and no consensus, and a part of a speech which probably can be regarded, according to the so-called rules of sport, as political interference.

As far as I am concerned, Gayle has done enough things and has said enough things about West Indies cricket and about West Indies cricket personnel to apologise to the board. It is as simple as that.

Apology may be the wrong word to some people, but the management team could no longer call on him without him saying something like, "I am sorry if I offended you".

But then again, the board has said recently that that is not the real reason why he has not been selected.

The board has somehow made Gayle into a martyr by the way it does things and by the way it handles things.

Re the tours of Australia and New Zealand, something is strange.

inconceivable

Jamaica is one of the big four, Jamaica has the biggest population, Jamaica is one of the countries which take in the most money from West Indies matches, Jamaican companies or Jamaican-based companies support West Indies cricket more than companies in any other Caribbean country, Jamaican representation is important on the West Indies team, and Sabina Park is world-famous as a cricket stadium. There is no doubt about these things.

Something therefore seems to be happening between Jamaica and the West Indies board, or its CEO.

While one is sympathetic with the many islands which built nice, new stadiums for the World Cup in 2007 and now want to make use of them and to recover their money, it is inconceivable, or it should be inconceivable, that a team like Australia, or England, or South Africa, or India can tour the West Indies and not play even one match at Sabina Park.

The Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA), however, took too long to act, to ask the West Indies board why not.

The reason given about the time of the tour, about the scheduling and about the weather seems nothing more than a "red herring".

Matches have been played in Jamaica at that time and earlier in the year before and on many, many occasions.

And the news that Jamaica has been given a few matches during the New Zealand tour came so suddenly it seems that the decision was taken after Prime Minister Simpson Miller's words got to the West Indies board, or to be correct, to Ernest Hilaire, the board's CEO.

In all of this, however, what with JCA president Lyndel Wright claiming that neither himself nor Milton Henry, Jamaica's two representatives on the West Indies board, as well as Wycliffe Cameron, the Jamaican who is first vice president on the West Indies board, knew anything of that decision by the West Indies board, a few questions must be answered.

How can the West Indies board make such an important decision without some members knowing about it? How can such an important decision be taken and the people on the board, the people who are necessary for it to happen, and happen successfully, know nothing about it until they read about it in the newspapers? And why are the Jamaicans on the West Indies board treated with such contempt and Jamaica with so little respect?

Is it because of the lack of clout, the lack of stature, by the Jamaica representatives?

In the days of R.K. Nunes, Robert Marley, Allan Rae and Pat Rousseau, all big men in the Jamaican society, all presidents of the West Indies board, that would not happen, that could not happen, mainly because they were men of a different calibre from Jamaica's representatives today, so were the men representing Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana.

political interference

Prime Minister Simpson Miller may well have flirted with the rules on governments' interference with sports two Saturdays ago, but no one has a right, certainly not the CEO of the West Indies board, to chastise her, to say that "would be tantamount to a member of the Jamaican Cabinet lambasting and deriding the leader of the Cabinet and fellow Cabinet colleagues and being returned to that august body without any accountability for his or her actions".

That is part of what is wrong with the rules on political interference in sport.

The prime minister is elected by the people of Jamaica to look after Jamaica and its people as best as possible and in doing that, no one has the right to question her, no one in sport, no one in the West Indies - which is so important to the people of the West Indies - and especially so when she did nothing wrong.

The prime minister simply said: "The current dispute is untenable and I am very disturbed by how long this matter has gone on without a resolution. There has been no trial and no hearing and as we know from the popular maxim - 'justice delayed is justice denied', it is not just to have one of the world's leading cricketers being excluded from Test cricket. This matter demands an amicable resolution as quickly as possible."

The second question is this: who runs West Indies cricket? is it Julian Hunte, the elected president of the board; or is it Hilaire, the hired CEO?

It is sad that West Indies cricket has reached a stage that Wright, a Jamaican and a West Indies board member, has said that we, the Jamaica cricket board, are concerned about our player, about Chris Gayle, getting back on the West Indies team; it is sad that so many Jamaicans now believe that Jamaica must go it alone; it is sad to see Jamaica's cricket strangled by the West Indies Cricket board; and it is very sad to listen to Wright on the issue and to hear Hilaire's words re the Jamaican prime minister.

It is sad to see what is happening in West Indies cricket after listening to the words of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller two Saturday nights ago, after hearing the words which brought happiness to my heart as she spoke about cricket's place in the Jamaican society and about the value of the clubs, as she promised to help Jamaica's cricket, as she pleaded with the private sector to get involved, and with the government-funded Sports Development Foundation to do its part in assisting the Jamaican rally in cricket.

Hopefully this is not finally the beginning of the end of West Indies cricket, at least with Jamaica as a part of it. The battle lines, however, seem to be drawn, and undoubtedly so.