A free-for-all

You bring the iron pot. I'll walk with the geera.

We call it a fete match. Elsewhere up the Caribbean chain, it's known as curry-goat cricket. By whatever name, this version of the game is all about fun, with little more than a rudimentary acknowledgement of the basic rules that govern the sport. That superficial adherence lingers until the heat of the afternoon and the cumulative effects of copious quantities of alcohol and artery-clogging food take hold, rendering the final result as nothing more than an opportunity for heated old talk, more rum and more roti well after sunset.

This is the context in which we must absorb Windwards manager Lockhart Sebastien's implication that the regional first-class match between Guyana and the Windwards was reduced to the status of curry-goat cricket when Shivnarine Chanderpaul, 78 not out at the end of the first day's play at Providence on Saturday, flew across to Trinidad for Sunday's West Indies Players Association (WIPA) awards ceremony in Port-of-Spain.

Unless they are lying, this was done without the prior knowledge of Guyanese team manager Carl Moore or coach Albert Smith. The visitors refused to allow the home side to use a substitute fielder in Chanderpaul's continued absence on Monday. Guyana therefore had ten players on the field before lunch, by which time the former West Indies captain had returned from collecting the three major awards at the WIPA function to take his place in the side.

Keep in mind that the start of this fixture was already pushed back from Friday to Saturday because the Windwards' gear had not arrived with them, with the further implication being that any players in that match selected for the second Test against Sri Lanka would only have arrived here last night or early this morning for the five-day fixture starting tomorrow at the Queen's Park Oval. However, based on a very recent precedent, it is quite possible that the cricketers concerned could have just upped and duss it to the airport sometime yesterday, leaving their team-mates to devour the remaining roti and curry-goat after play.

Jimmy Adams, another former West Indies captain, spoke eloquently on Sunday night about the chronic failure of the game's administrators in the region in our nearly 80 years of Test cricket to take control of the product and modify the systems and processes to meet the demands of an ever-changing game in an ever-changing global environment.

As a former player and now secretary of WIPA, Adams' impressive feature address may have left him open to the usual criticism that those who see the players as helpless victims of administrative incompetence and corporate indifference refuse to acknowledge that the cricketers themselves are also responsible for the depths to which we have plummeted in just 12 years.

Far be it from me to try to understand the workings of such a complex and intense mind, but I suspect that Adams would view the players' indiscretions as the result of the absence of those processes and systems, which, if implemented and adhered to consistently and impartially, would provide both the opportunities for players to fulfill their potential and the regulated structure that ensures the integrity and viability of West Indies cricket for the foreseeable future.

When Ryan Hinds and a number of other players on both sides can behave as badly as they did in last year's Challenge final between Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados at Guaracara Park, and then face absolutely no sanction, whatever the reason, it must seem like a free-for-all. When Chris Gayle, whether rightly or wrongly, refuses to apologise to then WICB president Ken Gordon for public criticism of the board, and then Gordon's successor, Julian Hunte, rightly or wrongly, drops the matter entirely in an effort to give the players some love, are the cricketers then wrong to assume they can essentially do as they please?

	Six weeks before Australia's Test party starts the journey to the Caribbean and 11 weeks before the first limited-over match, Cricket Australia released both of their squads to take on the West Indies yesterday, including all of their top players, whether or not they are contracted to the Indian Premier League. Yet at midday of the same day, there was still no official word on the composition of the West Indies Test squad for a match starting less than 48 hours later

Where else in the world would a scheduled day of first-class cricket be adjusted for reasons outside of the playing conditions, as occurred on Sunday at Guaracara to accommodate players getting to the Hyatt Regency on time for the WIPA event that evening? In the absence of integrity and respect for a system that is actually proven to work, any number can play.

Six weeks before Australia's Test party starts the journey to the Caribbean and 11 weeks before the first limited-over match, Cricket Australia released both of their squads to take on the West Indies yesterday, including all of their top players, whether or not they are contracted to the Indian Premier League. Yet at midday of the same day, there was still no official word on the composition of the West Indies Test squad for a match starting less than 48 hours later. And, of course, no one seems to know for sure if the IPL-bound trio of Gayle, Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan will be available from the start of the first Test against the Aussies at Sabina Park on May 22.

Wait, wait. I've just got an e-mailed press release from the WICB with the West Indies squad for this month's Under-15 International Championship. The team is to be led by Stephen Katwaroo, captain of fourth-placed T&T, who got the nod ahead of Donovan Nelson, leader of the all-conquering Jamaican side and top wicket-taker at the regional tournament in Dominica last month.

Keep the rum, but I won't mind some dhalpouri to go with the curry-goat at the Oval tomorrow.