Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.
By Tony McWatt
Former Cricket West Indies CEO Chris Dehring has called for the West Indies cricket team to be disbanded and for individual Caribbean territories to go it alone. Dehring’s sentiments were recently expressed in a The Jamaica Observer newspaper article as his personal response to West Indies’ inglorious first-round exit from the 2022 ICC World Cup, which has now reached its semi-final stage. Coming from such a revered individual, to whom West Indies cricket has offered so much personally, Dehring’s Chicken Little advocacy of ‘The Sky Is Falling’ would be extremely disappointing to the greater majority of fans and true followers. of Caribbean cricket.
In the first paragraph of the article, Dehring has pinpointed some of the symptoms of the rapid decline that has plagued West Indies cricket in recent times. However, he has dismissed as insignificant their individual and combined effects as contributing factors.
“As if governance, management, selections or the application of strikes are the root causes of the latest episode of a downward spiraling saga of humiliation!”
However accurate he was in identifying such symptoms, he can rightly be accused of being at least partially inaccurate in claiming as proof of their insignificance that each of them has been effectively addressed without any success. “We saw that coming years ago. We tried to stop him, but we were ineffective and powerless. So we’ll swap personnel and try again with the promise of a fresh start. And they will rock too!”
As far as the governance of West Indies cricket is concerned, Dehring is being completely dishonest in his suggestion that it has been effectively addressed at any level. Within the last ten to fifteen years, at least three major reports have been formulated with indications that the governance of West Indies cricket is in dire need of a major overhaul. The Patterson, Justice Lucky and Caricom Cricket Committee reports have been almost completely ignored by successive Cricket West Indies (CWI) administrations.
Much the same can be said of both the general management of West Indies cricket and the selection of its teams. Maximum efficiency is not a description that can reasonably be applied to either in relation to West Indies cricket. CWI’s administrative headquarters based in Antigua has long been a bastion for the most basic administrative blunders imaginable. Almost every year for as long as anyone can remember now, there have been glaring administrative errors emanating from CWI headquarters.
Team selections have also been plagued with mistakes of late. The West Indies’ dismal performance in last year’s World Cup, which resulted in a required participation in the qualifying round of this current 2022 edition, was directly attributable to its selection of a representative squad that consisted mostly of celebrities over age and unfit. name the players whose best dates were long gone!
Dehring’s dismissal of the application of batting as the root cause of the West Indies’ “descending saga of humiliation and spiral of indignity” is also unwarranted. Several former West Indian greats, including Sir Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Sir Vivian Richards, have publicly lamented the failure of West Indian batsmen of the current era and more recently to accept personal responsibility for making the necessary corrections. for their most obvious technical deficiencies. .
“West Indies cricket, that glorious institution we rightly adore, is a beautiful idea whose time has passed,” says Dehring. He then goes on to justify his suggestion with the sentiments expressed in the following: “It should go without saying, no nation called the ‘West Indies’. No national team can compete in the modern paradigm of professional sports without a production line. national, structure and most importantly, resources. But Caribbean governments cannot justify investing in this institution without obvious national or political benefits. Nor is there a proper professional cricket infrastructure. We have such a view, but not there is no production line managed from garden to professional.”
Here again, Dehring has pinpointed one of the underlying causes for the decline of West Indies cricket. His contention that Caribbean governments must have identifiable national or political benefits to justify their investment in providing the necessary production lines, infrastructure and resources that would arrest the decline experienced is also spot on. The question that Dehring has conveniently sidestepped, perhaps as a result of his personal involvement as a former CEO, is to what extent CWI has approached the governments of its member territories, individually or collectively under the Caricom umbrella, with formal requests for assistance required.
Has CWI ever approached any Caricom member government with requests for employment assistance to create jobs that would allow existing professional franchises of its participating members Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Leeward Islands, Windwards and Trinidad & Tobago to establish office with full-time staff that would do the work needed to establish production lines and connections from kindergarten schools to professionals? Did anyone inside CWI’s administrative headquarters with its dozens of paid staff, a current reality that may have even begun under Dehring’s tenure as CEO, ever conceive of a list of identifiable benefits to present to the heads of governments or their respective ministers who can justify providing the assistance requested by them?
The answer to both questions is most likely a resounding no. Half-baked and mediocre efforts to solve an issue are not worth much.
The reality is that former West Indies cricket reached the pinnacle of global dominance as one of the most successful teams ever in the history of any sport was built on a four-pillar foundation that has now been dismantled. Therefore, for it to be restored, it simply requires the satisfactory reconstruction or replacement of each of these four pillars.
The first of those pillars was the widespread popularity of cricket itself throughout the Caribbean to such a degree that almost every male child from the moment he knew himself wanted to be the next great West Indies cricketer. Not so today, as the popularity of cricket has declined significantly both in terms of participation and spectator attendance at international matches hosted by the Caribbean.
The second pillar was a preponderance of well-known heroes for aspiring young cricketers to emulate. From George Headley, the three Ws, Ramadhin and Valentine, to Sobers, Kanhai, Gibbs, Hall and Griffith, there were plenty of well-known, easily identifiable heroes who were worthy of emulation.
Pillar number three was the sense of pride and recognition of the type of national hero that came with becoming a West Indies player that existed on such a scale as to influence any aspiring cricketer to do all that he could. necessary for their offense to become the best. Sir Gary Sobers talks about his propensity, even before he was a teenager, to play cricket with and against old men a few years his senior in the Baylands area of Barbados where he was born and raised. Lance Gibbs recalls bowling on a single stump for hours every day as a means of developing his spin and accuracy.
The final pillar of the West Indies rise to greatness was the availability of English county and league cricket, which allowed the Caribbean region’s most talented players to further develop their skills through an engagement in the rigorous demands of professional cricket. It was no mere coincidence that every member of the conquering West Indies teams of the mid-seventies to the early nineties had been professionally schooled by their involvement in English county or English League cricket.
The dismantling of each of these four pillars and the crumbling of the foundation associated with them are the main identifiable causes for the decline of West Indies cricket. Rather than suggest breaking up the West Indies team in favor of countries like his native Jamaica going it alone, Dehring for all his brilliance and experience should identify workable solutions. The ultra-efficient implementation of which would arrest its decline and return West Indies cricket to its former glory.
As for the necessary financial resources, Dehring must remember that with the recent discovery of oil in Guyana, Exxon one of the richest companies in the world now has a presence in the Caribbean. The region itself also boasts several billion dollar companies such as Demerara Distillers, makers of El Dorado Rums, Grace Kennedy, Sandals and many more. There are hundreds of very wealthy individuals who could be approached for financial assistance to re-popularize cricket among school-aged children. Including Rihanna, who as the second richest woman on the planet is known for her love of cricket.
What must now be done is as obvious as the availability of the required resources. The missing element so far has obviously been the required efficiency of management of CWI administrations, both those led by Dehring himself and his successors!
About The Writer: Guyana-born, Toronto-based Tony McWatt is the publisher of WI Wickets and Wickets/online cricket monthly magazines aimed at Caribbean and Canadian readers respectively. He is also the only son of former Guyana and West Indies wicketkeeper-batsman, the late Clifford “Baby Boy” McWatt.
Read our email. Quickly. Factual. Free.
Sign up and stay up to date with Barbados’ free latest news.
