COMMENTARY

How quickly we forget!

by Philip Hackett

Monday, July 11, 2005

How quickly we forget! The yorker delivered by former West Indies speedster Curtly Ambrose when he criticised the WIPA’s stance in the recent row with he Board, was disappointing if not surprising.

It is not unusual for former cricketers to view things differently after putting aside their bats and tucking away their balls. We have seen it repeatedly as cricketers become administrators.

Ambrose, speaking on a radio programme recently, argued that the West Indies players had no basis for demanding more money when they have been failing to produce.

"We are getting licks for many years. We are last in the world ratings (among the top teams) because you can't count Bangladesh. We can't win a series. We can even draw a game," he said.

It would appear Ambrose was not impressed by the creditable draw that West Indies earned with Pakistan in the midst of the confusion fuelled by the new sponsorship contract.

Known for unleashing deadly deliveries at his opponents throughout a career in which he took 405 Test wickets, the comment from Ambrose was a stinging blow to the group of which he was a part not so long ago.

The WIPA through President Dinanath Ramnarine, the former West Indies leg spinner, has maintained that the failure of the players to make themselves available was not based on money. Roger Brathwaite, CEO of the WICB has presented the opposite view.

Most issues which reach the negotiating table in professional sport are in some way, even if indirectly, related to money. It is sad that Ramnarine and Brathwaite fail to see the folly in splitting hairs in such a meaningless manner.

That the West Indies players have come up short consistently is not debatable. That many of them seem to make less than a sincere effort to improve performance is also widely recognised but what is also obvious is that the WICB has done little in the way of player development to facilitate competent performances by the team. The Board’s view of development seems to be the hiring of an Australian task force. If the players have contributed to the current state of the game, the Board must also accept culpability.

According to Ambrose if one is employed to do a job and comes up short that person has no basis to ask for a raise. I would also suggest that if a person is employed to do a job but not provided with a suitable environment in which to perform the employer cannot then justifiably penalise the employee for any shortcomings.

Maybe Ambrose has forgotten the days when he was part of a player strike in England prior to the 1998-99 tour to South Africa. Some of the issues then also related to wages.

Ambrose may argue that the players at that time were more worthy of financial rewards having just beaten England at home but we must not forget that prior to the current nonsense that started before the VB series in Australia, West Indies had just completed its most celebrated success in a quarter of a century.

Since then the Board has changed the coach and the captain once and the vice captain three times. It is not a typical response to success. At no time during the career of Ambrose would West Indies have won such a prestigious tournament that included all the Test playing countries.

Any momentum gained through that success was soon lost as the Board turned the players against each other in their destructive divide-and-rule strategy. They must take most of the blame for the poor performance of the West Indies team over the last six months.

Having now retired it may be easy for Ambrose to forget. To dismiss the WIPA based on the performance of the team is to take a myopic view of the issue. The events of the last few months have exposed the weakness of the current system of administration.

Both parties have contributed to the impasse but the WICB has clearly shown a lack of understanding of the techniques in handling the affairs of modern professional sport.

The players have done themselves no favours by failing to stick together and Ramnarine’s occasional tirades only exacerbate an already tense situation. The WIPA represents players throughout the region, not only the stars like Lara, Gayle and Sarwan. The eight ‘A’ team players who broke ranks had not long before benefited from the work done by the WIPA to ensure pay for them for the tour of Sri Lanka.

A fragmented body is powerless to achieve anything meaningful. Thoughtless comments by former players with short memories add another dimension that can be problematic for the WIPA and for West Indies cricket. 

Philip Hackett is a freelance sports journalist who has covered international cricket matches for the Nation Newspaper in Barbados as well as the CMC (formerly CANA). Hackett is also a well-respected cricket radio commentator who has covered Test matches for the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation as well as numerous regional first class matches. He has also provided print media and electronic media coverage of table tennis throughout the region. Hackett is a physical education teacher and has worked in Bermuda, Barbados and now the Cayman Islands. He is a qualified international table tennis coach, having received his training in Hungary and a Level one cricket coach. Hackett holds a Masters degree in education from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

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