West Indiea - No crisis, say critics (11 Dec 1997)

Wednesday, December 10, 1997

No crisis, say critics

By GARTH WATTLEY

THE WEST Indies cricket team was bowled for a duck for the first time in 69 years in the just ended three-Test series in Pakistan. And the two successive innings defeats, followed by yesterday's ten-wicket defeat in Karachi, have led to almost universal cries of "crisis" from Kingston to the Kaiteur Falls.

But, Antiguan journalist Tim Hector and Barbadian cricket lecturer Dr Hilary Beckles are insisting that the Windies have lost only a battle, not the war.

Both, however, are demanding fundamental change in the way West Indies cricket is currently run.

"West Indies cricket is in decline but not in crisis," Antigua Outlet editor Hector emphatically told the Express.

Hector noted that after 15 years of success, decline was inevitable. "In no sport at any time in history has any team dominated any sport as has the West Indies in cricket," Hector reasoned, "that domination (...) had to come to an end and it has. We must accept that and build for the future."

It is the future, not so much the present that most concerns Beckles. "We are focussing on individuals and not the process," he said, "And if we don't get away from the individuals and deal with process, we will destroy the individuals. And we cannot afford to destroy either Courtney Walsh or Brian Lara."

Not surprisingly, these two have been the focus of much of the recent comment and controversy. But Beckles, head of the cricket programme at UWI's Cave Hill campus, lamented the "lack of intellectual understanding of the issue" and suggested that a "paradigm shift" was a major part of the struggle currently being waged in Caribbean cricket.

"Walsh said he does not understand what is going on," Beckles noted, "because he is part of the old school. What he is clearly recognising is the difference between the old mentality and the new mentality ... corresponding to the new age of globalisation."

This "new paradigm" was not necessarily good or bad but needed to be understood for what it was.

Describing Walsh as the " last standing hero" of the age when national pride more than anything else was the motivation for performance on the field, he suggested that something completely different makes Lara, "the first hero of the third paradigm", tick. In this age, he said, "professional cricketers see themselves as... entrepreneurs ... and cricket as a commodity that generates wealth."

"The leaders of these two paradigms are now looking each other in the face," he said. "We need to negotiate (with the new wave) on its own terms and let's see what we can extract from it."

However, Beckles was certain that the clash of cultures need not lead to a crisis in the team.

But he, like Hector, was not optimistic that the WICB as currently constituted could do what was necessary.

"For too long," declared Hector, "the West Indies have been playing the aristocratic game. We are resentful of anybody who shows an anxiety to lead and does so openly. We prefer them to behave like British aristocrats, concealing the desire to lead."

And focussing directly on the present situation involving the captaincy, he added, "We have picked up a disproportionate hostility to Lara because of this. It is precisely that desire and hunger to lead which the West Indies needs now to lift it out of the doldruns." Saying that "the disaster has made what we failed to do consciously, a necessity,"he said we now need to pick a young team, led by Lara. In that way, he said, "we would see our team rise far faster than the worst sceptic would believe."

Beckles, however, remains somewhat sceptical. Stressing again that the changeover from the Walsh era to the Lara era was not being handled very skilfully, he declared that the WICB is "obsolete in its structure" and "must be restructured." However, merely changing personalities, Beckles insists, would not do. Noting the corporate sector backgrounds of both current and former WICB presidents, Beckles declared: "Nothing in the history of the region suggests that the merchant class can be at the centre of any development programme."

Calling for the Board to become "player-centred" to deal successfully with the new challenges and begin winning the Test battle again, he said it will have to be as a united team and a single, united nation.

"The West Indies team now needs to have a single home. The West Indies team must represent the West Indies nation. This team needs to have a Federation to play for."

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