FIRST PUBLISHED BY BARBADOSADVOCATE.COM
THE Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. The Honourable Ralph Gonsalves, recently called for the removal of Dave Cameron as President of the West Indies Cricket Board. Gonsalves’ justification for this was apparently grounded in the decision to abandon the tour of India by the members of the West Indies cricket team.
In my view, Cameron should not have been elected to his position when he was, and I have said as much, but I note that he was chosen through a legitimate process. In light of this, my view of his suitability has to be circumscribed by the fact that his peers thought otherwise.
Prime Minister Gonsalves intimated that he was better informed than the rest of us on Cameron’s attitude in relating to the players. I am not as privileged as Gonsalves, and since my facts do not extend as far as his, I must confine myself to what the observable evidence supports.
It was noteworthy that although Gonsalves did not declare the players innocent of all wrongdoing, he still chose to lay the blame for the abandoned tour at Cameron’s feet. As I understand it, the players in India made a decision, against the advice and pleading of Manager Clive Lloyd and others, to walk off the field of play and come back to the Caribbean. Cameron was not part of that decision and wanted them to complete the tour.
It was reported that the players had been sent off to India without a contract being in place. I am not sure why this should be regarded as a world changing event, especially since the players did not individually negotiate their own contracts. Their union, The West Indies Players’ Association, was responsible for negotiating contracts on their behalf. They did not have to be personally present during that negotiation process, so they could be on the other side of the world while their contracts are being negotiated. If negotiations have not been concluded before a tour starts, it is quite in order for their union to continue negotiations while they are away. For this to be blamed on Cameron is unfortunate.
Although an attempt was made to project the idea that the players were independent contractors, it seems clear that they are in fact employees of the West Indies Cricket Board, once they have been contracted to play. Their decision to abandon the Indian tour in the manner in which they did, amounts to an employee walking off the job. If a worker abandons his job, he is unemployed by his own decision. There is no reasonable basis for blaming Cameron for this decision by the players.
If the players could justifiably have a grouse with any person, it would have to be with their own representatives – the administrators of their union. No other person or entity could be blamed in any way for their action. If they were dissatisfied with the terms of the contract negotiated for them by the West Indies Players’ Association, that was a matter for them and their union. Dave Cameron and the West Indies Cricket Board do not stand between the players and their union.
I know of no other Test playing cricket team where the players do as they like and the administrators are always found to be wrong. Herein lies the reason for our prolonged embarrassment as a cricket playing region.
From the moment the colonial masters ceased to control regional cricket, there has been revolt after revolt – on and off the field. In Barbados, we have had the interesting situation of the representatives of the Barbados Cricket Association attending the meeting that elected Dave Cameron as President of the West Indies Cricket Board and voting for Cameron, against their own President, who was part of the team of the then incumbent President, Dr. Julian Hunte, who was standing for re-election. And business continued as usual. The removal of Hunte put out the light of West Indies cricket resuscitation.
It was probably poetic justice that it was Dwayne Bravo who plunged the knife of ultimate embarrassment into the heart of West Indies cricket by leading the abandonment of the Indian tour. This man declared that West Indies cricket was not a priority for him. His cricketing interests, he said, were Trinidad and Tobago, his Indian Cricket League team, and anything after that. Certainly, only a person with a similar low interest in West Indies cricket could have thought Dwayne Bravo suitable to be a member of any West Indies cricket team, far less its captain. He has repaid them well, as he should, but he has embarrassed the rest of us.
The exclusion of Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard from the team for the ICC World Cup has been called victimisation by many, but not by Clive Lloyd or the Board. I am entitled to my own view. I believe that they were not excluded on the basis of their cricketing ability. But this is not to say that they should not have been excluded. It would be nothing short of madness to keep a cancer in your body if you can be rid of it. The greatest disappointment is that those who control our cricket were not bold enough to openly say that in the interest of our cricket, people who do not treasure their involvement in our team have been and will continue to be excluded.
Chris Gayle has strongly stated his displeasure at the exclusion of Bravo and Pollard. Had he been employed with any other cricket team, he would have ended his career with his words. But the Board’s refusal to fire him long ago now gives him the audacity to do what he did.
If our cricket were properly managed, Gayle would not have been in South Africa with this team. He confessed that he had not even practised.
West Indies cricket is dying. Few would disagree with this conclusion, except those who have an interest in suggesting otherwise. Before it is finally laid to rest, the University of the West Indies cricket research facility at the Cave Hill Campus should conduct an academic analysis of why our cricket is on this inevitable path. I believe that research would reveal the cause of death to be a lack of discipline in management and players, and political interference.
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