T Cozier: Respect due to Hall (3 May 1998)

May 03 1998

COZIER ON CRICKET: Respect due to Hall

Tony Cozier

CONFIRMATION that Wes Hall has resigned as chairman of the West Indies selectors will evoke mixed feelings.

It has never been a position to be envied and Hall came to it at a most difficult time. He came knowing full well what he was getting himself in for but it was a responsibility he would not shirk.

He was well prepared.

As manager, he was at the heart of the turbulence triggered by Brian Lara's exit, and subsequent return, to the team in England in 1995, that eventually led to the resignation of Richie Richardson as captain, the dismissal of Andy Roberts as coach and the installation of the new dispensation at the Board within a few months.

Teams that he and his panel picked ö and the panel numbered five ö were defeated by Australia, trounced by Pakistan and barely held their own against India and Sri Lanka.

Ironically and, no doubt, satisfyingly, he has chosen to go, officially for business reasons, after a series in which the West Indies have regained their prestige and self-respect with their triumphs over England.

Not that Hall ever lost his. He and his colleagues, like others before them, were chastised and criticised and, as he himself relates, sometimes personally abused.

But he always kept his perspective, his sense of humour and his openness. And, as he did when he sent down pace like fire in for the West Indies in the 1960s, he was never less than fully committed to giving of his best.

Of course, there were mistakes and the repeated chopping and changing of the wicket-keepers, openers and No.6 batsmen hinted at desperation and vacillation.

But no selectors can make silk purses out of sow's ears and there hasn't that much silk going around in the past couple of years.

He was hurt, understandably, by the Board's rejection of his panel's recommendation to appoint Lara captain a series earlier than he was but even more so by Carl Hooper's defiance of his directive as chairman of selectors that he should play in Guyana's match against England on the recent tour.

It was, he said at the time, "totally unacceptable, a flagrant dereliction of duty and a breach of authority" and he was on the point of immediate resignation over it for he had seen many times over how such individual bravado can undermine a team.

Upset him

Nothing, however, upset him as much as the "spiteful insularity from people in the highest quarters" he confronted and that remains such a hindrance to West Indies cricket.

That, more than any other single factor, led to his decision and he has warned that "the constant, uninformed criticism and pressure" will discourage "good people" from coming forward for the Board or to be selectors.

When a man who has experienced first-hand the hurly-burly of Caribbean politics and who has served West Indies cricket so nobly for so long can talk about the "mental discomfiture" he felt as he travelled around the region doing his voluntary job to the best of his ability,

West Indian cricket, like West Indian unity, is in trouble. But, as we have seen with the further example of Julian Rogers during the week, we have known that all along.

LOCAL SEASON

At last the Barbados Cricket Association is listening.

True, it might not have yet taken aboard Darnley Boxill's thoughtful proposals which it presented last year in its own newsletter and it seems to have finally shifted the one common plea of all players, that pitches should be covered, from the pending to the out tray.

But it has heard the collective voices of school and club cricketers and have dropped Sunday play from the intermediate and Goddard Enterprises' schools tournaments.

The commitment of dedicating every weekend for more than half the year to the game was turning older players, with families and little spare time, and younger ones, with studies and a modern notion of recreation, away from the game or, at least, into the less time-consuming second division.

A drain

Even at Division 1 and Premier League level, the BCA might find that its present schedule of Saturday-Sunday cricket from May through to December acts as a drain on the enthusiasm of the players.

It need only check the declining numbers in the nets as the season drags on to gauge the effect or hear the talk at its annual meeting with club captains and representatives this week.

It is an arrangement that is comparatively recent, necessitated by the marked increase in the numbers of teams and the introduction of the various limited-overs competitions over the past quarter-century but it has done nothing to improve the quality of play.

To reduce the number of days in a season, even by one Sunday in four, would mean more splitting of the divisions and, another old chestnut, the streamlining of the first, both of which encroach on controversial ground.

The BCA is currently having a study of the structure of cricket in Barbados undertaken on its behalf and, no doubt, these are areas that will be dealt with.

To its credit, it has already moved on its own initiative to respond to the comments on those who actually play.

As it prepares for the 1998 season, it might have caught the BCA's attention that every country has now separated Tests from One-Day Internationals, Australia the last to fall into line after overruling the scheduling wishes of Kerry Packer's television channel.

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has gone one step further and divided its two different domestic competitions, the President's Cup and the Red Stripe Bowl.

Following that lead, there is a case for the splitting of the local three-day and One-Day matches as well and basically converting them into separate seasons.

Starting things off exclusively with the Barbados Fire and General Cup and Shield would ensure more predictable weather and avoid the unsatisfactory delays that have so often affected it.

Source :: The Barbados Nation (https://www.nationnews.com/)