London trouble led to South Africa tears, says Camacho (9 February 1999)

9 February 1999

London trouble led to South Africa tears, says Camacho

Garth Wattley

He will soon have to sit in the judgment seat alongside president Pat Rousseau, chairman of the cricket committee Jackie Hendriks and chairman of selectors Michael Findlay, trying to discover the facts.

But there is one thing Stephen Camacho, CEO of the West Indies Cricket Board is already certain of: London trouble led to South African tears.

Camacho is part of the four-man WICB committee that will hear from West Indies captain Brian Lara, team manager Clive Lloyd and coach Malcolm Marshall on Thursday about the goings-on during the disastrous tour of South Africa which ended on Sunday.

In that seventh match of the one-day series, the Caribbean side crashed to their fifth straight defeat to lose the series 6-1. This came after an even more stunning 5-0 whitewash in the inaugural Test series against the South Africans.

But while cautioning against any pre-judgment of the issues, Camacho told the Express yesterday: "Speaking for myself, we had gone through a great deal of trouble to organise the camp in order to get players mentally and physically attuned. There can be no doubt that events prior to the tour would have had an adverse effect."

The start of the tour was delayed by a week-long stand-off between the board and the tour squad over fees and related issues. The matter was eventually settled at a London hotel. But before that time, the WICB actually sacked Lara and vice-captain Carl Hooper, only to reinstate them later.

Asked whether Lara's captaincy would be the point of focus at Thursday's meeting, or whether drastic changes could be expected, a cautious Camacho said: "Obviously we are going to look at all aspects of the tour. I'm not in a position to say anything before the meeting. We can't pre-judge the issue. We have to investigate the reports from the captain, manager and coach and form our conclusions."

However, commenting further on the way a tour that was billed as having great social and political importance turned out, Camacho said: "Our performance has been abject. It is one of the worst performances by a West Indies team for some time. There can be no doubt that we have played nowhere near our potential and there has to be reasons for that."

But while he noted that there was "absolutely no time" to regroup in the form of a training camp for instance, Camacho said that, "we certainly hope that we are going to play far better cricket against Australia".

The CEO and his fellow committee members, however, will be hoping to come up with at least a short-term way forward when they report to a full meeting of the WICB on February 22. It is there, too, that the selectors' recommendation of a captain for the Australia series will either be ratified or rejected.

Source :: The Trinidad Express (https://www.trinidad.net/express/)