No turning back for Aanensen

As much as we rejoice in ridiculing administrators of the West Indies Cricket Board, there is no way that Julian Hunte could be so far out of touch with off-field developments in the regional game. Maybe he can be accused of being overly optimistic, or even hopelessly naive, in believing that inviting West Indies Players Association president Dinanath Ramnarine to join the WICB as a non-executive member would not have created an awkward situation for at least one prominent official.

There may be legitimate issues relating to the dilemma faced by Bruce Aanensen in carrying out instructions from the new board president. However, the acidity of the exchanges, via letters that were released to the media, between the recently-appointed chief executive and the former Test legspinner last month must have had such a corrosive effect on their relationship that it was bound to affect the conduct of meetings where both were around the same table.

Aanensen has promised to make public the reasons for tendering his resignation less than four months into the job following a meeting of the board. That meeting, originally scheduled for Wednesday, was pushed back to tomorrow (Saturday) due to the disruption in travel and other arrangements created by the devastating passage of Hurricane Dean through the region.

Yet, while thousands of Caribbean citizens pick up the pieces in the aftermath of such a powerful weather system, it is bordering on the miraculous to suggest that the two Trinis could have immediately mended fences and moved on as if nothing had happened between them in the very recent past. Everyone who has had to endure the latest round of bacchanal that accompanies every failed campaign on the field would be aware of how personal the confrontation between the CEO and the players' boss had become.

A blindingly obvious indicator that there was no going back, certainly from Aanensen's point of view, was his correspondence that followed a letter from the players, who were then on tour in England, that they could no longer work with him after he referred to them as "incompetent" in the midst of their expected poor performances during the four-Test series.

While claiming that he was merely echoing the remarks of former West Indies captain Sir Vivian Richards, who worked as a comments personality on the BBC Radio commentary team for the series, this was just an aside to his explosive accusations of dishonesty and abusive manner on the part of Ramnarine.

Aanensen made it clear that he believed the letter purported to be from the players was written by Ramnarine himself, a charge strenuously denied by the WIPA president subsequently. To all intents and purposes, that was the end of that as far as any talk of reconciliation. Further allegations of a confrontational and insulting attitude towards other board members in the course of arbitration meetings and other negotiations were damning enough by themselves, but they all fade into the background against his fundamental claim that Ramnarine was going to extraordinary lengths to attack his personal and professional integrity.

In such an incendiary environment, up came Hunte in one of his first actions as successor to Ken Gordon as WICB president to invite Ramnarine onto the board, an invitation that was accepted as being in the best interests of West Indies cricket. Even if this can be interpreted as a masterstroke by Hunte to quell the frequent public chastising of the administrators by Ramnarine, there were bound to be other consequences which the former diplomat could not possibly have been ignorant of.

In this context, Aanensen's resignation has actually been long in coming. Indeed, the fact that he has already indicated that he will explain the reasons for this course of action to the media following tomorrow's meeting in St Lucia essentially means that the WICB really has no decision to make other than to accept his departure.

Given the leaking of his resignation letter in a local newspaper yesterday, that explanation is no longer necessary, although he may seek to further elaborate on some of the points in what should have been a confidential document.

The fact that, once more, someone at a very influential level of the WICB is more than willing to divulge sensitive information to the general public will probably be the final nail in the coffin of Aanensen's association with the board, given his often expressed despair at the inability of certain elements in the organisation to respect confidentiality.

And while so many of us lap up all the intrigue, conspiracy theories and diabolical intentions, where does all of this leave West Indies cricket, especially in terms of where it really matters, on the field?

After the entertainment of the fiesta that is next month's Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa, the regional side will be back to the protracted business of struggling in Test series in South Africa at the end of the year and at home to Sri Lanka and world champions Australia in the first half of 2008. In other words, the departure of Aanensen, much like all the other many comings and goings of so many different personalities at all levels of West Indies cricket, are symptomatic of a much deeper problem at the very heart of the administration of the regional game.

The optimistic tone of Gordon in his farewell statement four weeks ago notwithstanding, there is nothing to suggest that anything is going to change, even in the long term.