Ramnarine should heed Gordon's remarks

What role does the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) and its president, in particular, ascribe to the organisation in West Indies cricket? Mr Dinanath Ramnarine will no doubt answer that, as the players' representative body in negotiations with the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), his mandate is to secure the best interests of the people who employ him.

That would be a correct conclusion but only so far as it goes since West Indies cricket, perhaps more than any other regional institution, is more than simply a matter between the board and the players. The rights of the West Indian populations who have supported their team through good times, as well as bad, have to be taken into consideration.

This means that the WIPA has to see itself as being a trade union and more in the sense of having to reflect always on what damage, if any, its statements and actions are doing on the present and future prospects of the Caribbean's acclaimed version of the game.

Moreover, Mr Ramnarine would do well to consider that even as the players continue to receive packages superior to those of the stars of yesteryear, who did so much to raise the region's sporting status, the assessment made about them, both here and abroad, has never been worse.

Many West Indians hold fast to the view that they have been betrayed by players who seek first to fatten their pockets and only then to do the work necessary to achieve world standards - even if then. In their reckless zeal in pursuit of fortune, if not fame, the players, fronted by Mr Ramnarine and his old-style trade union advisers, seem bent on confrontational bickering.

It is in this context that we wish to draw Mr Ramnarine's attention to outgoing WICB president, Ken Gordon's charge that his abusive and threatening attitude has only served to stymie attempts to have the two bodies work together for the good of West Indian cricket.

Mr Gordon has suggested to the WIPA president that the latter should engage in some honest self-analysis of his own style rather than seek comfort in the view that it is the style of everybody else which is wrong. The least Mr Ramnarine could now do is to consider, in a spirit of humility, whether Mr Gordon's assessment has any merit or whether he just happens to be always right.