Another warrior gone

It would not have come as too much of a surprise that Sir Viv Richards is no longer chairman of selectors for the West Indies team ... not if one had been observing the patterns surrounding West Indies cricket.

There is an inability to cope with men of stature, and if it is a man with a strong personality too, the die is cast.

It would be useful to examine Sir Viv's departure in the context of past experiences and observations from some giants of West Indies cricket, all of whom reported frustration at the powerlessness they felt in performing their duties.

Starting at the horse's mouth: in March 1996, I interviewed Viv Richards. It had been five years since he retired as captain of West Indies, and in that time he had never been asked by the West Indian board to perform any role in the region's cricket. He said then that he felt this was because they felt "threatened" and intimidated by his presence and were worried that he would gain too much power. It was basically what he had said in his 1991 autobiography, Hitting Across the Line, when he asked scathingly of the board, "What, exactly, have they done [for cricket]?

"Some of these guys, on the board, are old cricketers and I feel they are jealous - jealous because, perhaps, they don't get the rewards that today's guys get. I don't know. They all seem so naïve and petty. Until we get rid of these people and bring in people who genuinely care about West Indies cricket, we are sunk."

Richards had acknowledged that he had a forceful personality, drilled by his disciplinarian father, a quasi-military man; but he felt it was always clear he had the best interest of West Indies cricket at heart, and would not abide slackers. It is this famously brusque manner that has not endeared him to those under his watch: a young bunch of cricketers newly empowered as trade unionists and well ensconced as stars without a galaxy. For them there is no pantheon, no cause to connect to a grand heritage - no knowledge. What do they know of Viv Richards that would enable them to respect his views?

Take Clive Lloyd. Who dared imagine that the man who led the most powerful cricket force in the world would be so shabbily dismissed by men who could never dream to wear his shoes? It happened. He too had been flung off into the Windies wilderness that will eventually be the site of all our cricketing heroes. (Sir Frank Worrell would have ended up there too, were it not for the intervention of Sir Phillip Sherlock of the University of the West Indies.)

In November 1999, Ryan Naraine interviewed Lloyd, whose essential mood was the same as Sir Viv, his successor. "My contract more or less says I'm to work on the development of cricket in the region. But half of the things I'm supposed to do haven't been done. I'm told I can't be a selector because I don't live in the West Indies. Well, I've been living overseas for 30 years and was captain of the West Indies during those years. We have a physio who lives in Australia. But, they say I can't be a selector ... To me, all those things are a slap in my face ... I can't stand the system under which I have to work. I am very frustrated with the way things are set up ... a lot of people are blaming me for things for which I have no jurisdiction over ..."

Lloyd went on to complain that the West Indian board did not allow its cricket committee to function without intervening, concluding that, "It might simply be a power thing, who knows?"

He went on to cite what he called the "Malcolm Marshall situation". "He was the coach and a selector. Then, all of a sudden, he wasn't a selector any more ... nobody told him why, even though his contractual arrangements said that he should be a selector ... But that is how they do things. It is frustrating and heartbreaking for me because no-one wants to win more than I do. But, when I have little control over things and then have to take the blame, that is a bitter pill to swallow."

He spoke of the discipline of the team when he was captain and its "pride, passion and professionalism", and lamented the absence of these qualities in modern times.

It was the same complaint from Marshall and Andy Roberts, and its echo now reverberates from Brian Lara.

The current scenario was detonated when journalists pointed to Lara's complaints that selectors overruled his requests for a spinner. It set up a personal opposition between Richards and Lara, two strong players in the camp, and it failed to respect differences of opinion as issue-oriented and not personality clashes. It reduced the situation to a matter of pride, and these are men stoked on the concept of personal honour.

But Richards has always publicly supported Lara, telling me in 1996 that "We need the Brian Laras. We need heroes that we can look upon." Lara had been under pressure then as he is now, and Richards, knowing what that is like, had said, "I think we need to offer our help and not to run him down, because of our hopes ... you take Brian Lara now from West Indies cricket and what do we have?"

What do we have indeed? With Richards gone, Lloyd gone, Marshall and Roberts gone, and the calls for Lara's head coming, the question remains: why haven't we been able to manage the presence of strong personalities?

Lurking in the shadows of that is the knowledge that at the heart of all this mismanagement one constant remains unchallenged and unmoving: the West Indies Cricket Board.