Time to start healing process (Commentary)

The prospect of a former international player leading the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) is an intriguing one. We've never really had a president who has starred at the highest level.

Sir Conrad Hunte, elected BCA president on Tuesday, articulated more clearly a vision of the way forward for cricket in Barbados though one might feel a trifle sorry for Tony Marshall.

Elements opposed to Marshall worked hard to "demonise" him to the point where yesterday's headline in the Barbados Advocate, "Hunted Down," had a ring of truth about it.

Marshall's backers are not without sin however, as letters by suspiciously fictitious authors, not all of them kind, found themselves within the pages of our newspapers.

Thankfully, a bruising election of this kind will not be repeated next year and the new executive committee can belatedly get down to the task of steering our cricket through difficult times.

Sir Conrad's great strength appears to be his eternal optimism and he will need to retain that amid the rampant negativism that has enveloped our cricket - which is the most analysed and dissected aspect of life in Barbados. The tiresome prattle that has become Best And Mason is but one vehicle (in my view, to quote a favourite term of one of its hosts).

There may have been a broom at work at Sherbourne but this is no fresh team, with Sir Conrad being the only newcomer to the board. What we are hoping for is a fresh approach, a fresh guard if you like.

Whatever good he might have done, Marshall's presidency divided the cricket community and it is doubtful whether he was capable of uniting it.

That job of healing falls to Hunte, whose interview with Haydn Gill in the SUNDAY SUN was his most persuasive effort at setting out an agenda.

On the other hand, Joel Garner used up a whole page in the Advocate to say precious little. Shades of his newspaper columns - obfuscation, gobbledegook and indecipherable codewords.

Yet, he has a part to play but he should never feel that he alone has integrity - about which he constantly reminds us - and that he alone has the interests of cricketers at heart.

Non-players also love the game and they might have wanted to give him a reminder - because the BCA membership, if one might judge by the television pictures, is not one of cricketers. (The membership itself might be ripe for reform, to separate membership for seating purposes and membership for voting purposes as a means of placing power in the clubs)

The BCA has made a start in cricket development - it is wrong to suggest that nothing has been done - and Sir Conrad clearly wants to build on that. It would be helpful if he could mention the names of a few good coaches apart from the two openers in arms with whom he is familiar.

He needs all the help he can get from supporters, Government and business, and he'd better be aware that goodwill can evaporate overnight.

Finally, let's hope he doesn't follow foolish advice and ignore the needs of fans who turn up at Kensington Oval or wherever else.