David Vs Goliath

Like all other West Indian cricket fans I was extremely happy with our team’s victory over India on Friday at the Queen’s Park Oval. Over the last few years we have been depressed not simply by the fact that we were losing but by the manner of the defeats. Now we can say that we are extremely buoyed not simply because we won the One Day Series but because of the manner of the victories.

The team has shown remarkable resilience and character. In the First ODI we lost in the very last over. Some time ago such a close defeat — or put differently, having come so close to winning but not being able to do so — could have so dented our confidence that the rest of the Series would have been a steady downhill performance. This was not the case this time around. In the Second and Third ODI’s we won very close encounters, with both ending in the last few balls of the match.

The narrow defeats suffered by India clearly rattled them and they lost — or we won — comfortably on Friday to take an unbeatable 3-1 lead in the series. As you read this column the Fifth match will be underway and while it is impossible to predict an outcome (cricket, after all is the game of glorious uncertainties) I believe that the West Indies players want to close out the series with another win and then go into the Test series full of confidence. There is no reason now to doubt that they can’t achieve such a result.

I don’t wish to go back to all the details of our recent history but I believe that we lost some 18 months following our winning the ICC Champions Trophy in the UK. Though not long ago in a chronological sense, that victory seems eons ago. So much happened in West Indies cricket since then to cause great disruption to our cricket and the basic issue was money — the money to finance West Indies cricket.

In an effort to supposedly enhance the Board’s financial position, the long standing sponsor — Cable and Wireless — was dumped for the “new kid on the telecommunications block” — Digicel. The change process was managed badly by the Board with the result being that it precipitated a conflict with the players and their Association — WIPA. The conflict was over very fundamental issues such as the players’ rights and it took more than a year for an agreement to be arrived at that would resolve the issue. In between the Board sought to brow beat the players into submission by wielding the stick of accept our contract or face non-selection.

This caused divisions amongst the players and a consequent loss of morale, quite apart from players not being sure whether they would be selected on merit and cricketing ability. It would have been a very brave or foolish man indeed who would have bet that a West Indian team in such circumstances could have won matches against teams that are as good as or better than them. And so we lost consistently. But with the situation now stable as a result of the settlement of the various contentious issues, the players — as the Players’ Association President, Dinanath Ramnarine, has said — can now “focus on the game while WIPA and the WICB put our energies together to create and maintain an environment that unleashes the creativity and genius that is associated with the people of the Caribbean”.

One key aspect of that environment is the generation of sufficient funds over the long term to ensure that the “genius” is nurtured and allowed to flourish. There is no doubt in my mind that we in the West Indies have suffered the worst impacts of the process of “globalisation” that has been underway in world cricket. On the one hand, the large cricketing powers decided that they would no longer allow the free movement of labour — in this case of cricketers. And so there are very few West Indians playing County cricket. This has denied our cricketers the possibility of playing first class cricket on a professional basis.

The West Indies must be the only major cricketing country that does not have a professional first class competition. The result is obvious for all to see. When our players move from the Carib Cup to the Test arena the gaps in their performances are large and glaring. Secondly, the WICB has been severely disadvantaged by the so-called level playing field instituted by the ICC in its future tours programme. What now obtains is an arrangement where each country plays another on a “home and away basis”. In this arrangement each host country pays the other a fixed fee for visiting.

This fee is fixed by the ICC and bears no relationship to the actual cost of hosting the tour or to the profits generated by it. Thus, when England tours the West Indies the cost of hosting is large — we having to move teams around by plane from island to island, compared to the use of buses in England. On the other hand, both gate receipts and television rights earnings are much, much larger in England than in the Caribbean and so when we host England the WICB may make a small profit, but when England hosts us they make a killing.

Years ago the arrangement was different with the profits being shared. The WICB therefore has seen its income fall drastically under the new “rules”. The result is that sponsorship money became all the more critical.

This is why Brian Lara’s speech the other evening at the WIPA Player Awards function was so important. Brian made a very powerful political speech. He spoke without a written text and began with a thumbnail sketch of our proud history. He then insisted that the worst fate for anyone is to be dependent. And that, he correctly asserted, is what West Indies cricket is. We are dependent on a sponsor and so we go “on our hands and knees” to beg for money, with the result being that the sponsor has a stranglehold on us, much to the detriment of West Indies cricket.

A truer statement there is not as the recent history of issues surrounding our sponsorship attests. Brian then proposed that there should be created a category of membership in West Indies cricket, and suggested that with an annual membership fee of just $20US, and a potential membership base of well over one million fans there could be a guaranteed stream of income for the WICB that would ensure that our cricket is never again dependent on a sponsor. Such a proposal is not necessarily new, but coming from Brian Lara is was very potent indeed, especially since he made it in the context of a historical analysis of dependence to both old capital — the British planter class — and the new — US transnationals.

There is another very important implication to Brian’s proposal and that is with a membership of upwards of a million persons contributing 50 or more percent of the Board’s annual income, there would at the same time be a democratisation of the WICB. With ownership comes power and so the West Indian people would have the opportunity to exercise control over what really belongs to them.

Mr. Lara has made the case brilliantly - if our cricket is so important to us all, why don’t we take the responsibility for it? The ball is now with the WICB.