WICB should eat some humble pie

Strange how things turn out sometimes. Three weeks ago, Chris Gayle stood before Ken Gordon, the president of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), like an insolent, but defiant, schoolboy to be castigated for daring to criticise the WICB's unprofessional handling of his appointment as captain for the limited-overs matches on the England tour and its failure to get three replacement players from the Caribbean in time for a warm-up match a week later.

After refusing to publicly apologise, Gayle was handed "a very strongly worded letter of reprimand" advising him that his behaviour is "totally unacceptable" and told that the WICB would pursue the matter at the end of the tour.

Instead of quaking in his boots, expecting heavy punishment on his return home, Gayle arrives today with the NatWest Trophy in his team's jubilant possession, the first series the West Indies have won overseas since the Champions Trophy in 2004.

Not only was the previously ridiculed side triumphant but Gayle himself was credited, not least by teammates , as the catalyst for the revival that led to a 1-1 share of the Twenty20 Internationals and a 2-1 win in the ODIs. It is not to say that Gayle's success at the helm came as a surprise to everyone.

Brian Lara singled him out for his leadership potential on the team's return from the victorious ICC Champions Trophy tournament in 2004. On the 2005 tour of Australia, Steve Waugh wrote that the team lacked "urgency and vibrancy" and identified the player who could make a difference as "the highly-talented Chris Gayle who has the presence and ability to influence those around him" - adding the caveat that Gayle would have to alter his attitude to do so.

Prior to this England tour, this column stated: "With his omnipresent sunglasses, glittering gold chain, changing hair-styles and supercool demeanour, the tall Jamaican is widely perceived as the quintessence of the present-day West Indies cricketer-all style, little substance.

"It is not an entirely unearned impression but Gayle is a significant all-round cricketer with a solid record. What is more, he is a spark who can lift spirits, off and on the field, a crucial consideration on a tour such as this."

Mark Nicholas, the English writer and television commentator, is not the only one to believe the WICB now needs to make a complete about-turn. "If I was them, I'd pat him on the back and offer him some more responsibility," he wrote in Tuesday's Daily Telegraph.

That is unlikely to happen, of course, even though Gordon is in his last days as head of the WICB. While the internet diary carrying the offending comments, and others before, appeared on the website of team sponsors, Digicel, and would have to be vetted by team manager Mike Findlay, it is Gayle, not the manager or Digicel, who took the rap.

The truth is that the WICB's blushes were not caused by Gayle but, long before his diary, by its own somersaulting over the rejection, and then reinstatement, of Gayle in preference to Daren Ganga as captain and by the time it took to get Dwayne Smith, Austin Richards and Lendl Simmons to England.

If anyone was owed an explanation, it was Gayle and Ganga. So how will the board "pursue this matter" as it promised to do?

As indigestible an option as it would be to a headstrong organisation, its best course is to eat some humble pie, concede that it did mess up over the captaincy, recognise that it misread Gayle's leadership qualities and, as Nicholas suggests, offer him some more responsibility, such as the vice-captaincy once Ramnaresh Sarwan, the appointed captain, returns.

To render such a difficult course a little more palatable, it might bar all players from writing diaries, or columns, for the media, whether passed by its appointed official or not.

Or is all that too much to expect?