West Indies: After the blackwash - Earl Best(18 Dec 1997)

Wednesday, December 17, 1997

After the blackwash: The baby and the bathwater

By EARL BEST

THE 3-0 defeat in Pakistan is now water under the bridge. But like the 1995 tour of England, it seems to have washed a whole lot into the open. So be warned: West Indies cricket is in crisis.

The mad rush to do get something done about it has started. Few seem interested in discovering the problem, but everybody knows what the solution is.

Courtney Walsh is a bad captain, they declare. It's time to get rid of him and put the Prince of Port of Spain in his place. Then and only then, the thinking goes, will we arrest the steep slide and get our team back on the winning track.

It's as easy as that...so they tell me anyway.

Forgive my scepticism but I've always been told that crises by their very nature do not allow of easy solutions. Besides, I've been taught, what defines a crisis is that whatever you do is a mistake.

This column once expressed the view that Lara should have been appointed West Indies captain for the Indian and Sri Lanka tours. The board did not agree and the evidence suggests that they did the right thing. But it now looks as if, for England '98, we are about to yield to public pressure and make the wrong mistake.

Fact is, I no longer trust the Board to do the right thing. When they came to office, Pat Rousseau's team looked set to make a real difference. The banquet certainly was a step in the right direction but they have gone steadily backwards since then.

During the Red Stripe Bowl and the controversy over the vice-captaincy for India that followed, none of the talk about Rousseau's agenda convinced me.

But the penny dropped for me a couple of weeks ago when the team for the UWI Vice Chancellor's match was announced.

Fans in the region, we were told, would be denied a chance to see Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge together again because the WICB was refusing to grant Haynes permission to play.

For me the reason given for the refusalthe former Test opener had not withdrawn his pending lawsuit against the Boardepitomised precisely the attitudes that had forced Rousseau's predecessor prematurely out to pasture.

Haynes' unblemished record over a decade and a half did not indemnify him against such shabby treatment. A board capable of that, I realised, is also capable of tossing the long-serving Walsh unceremoniously out on his backside simply because of the Pakistan blackwash.

What can it matter that Walsh has always given his all for the team? That he was the chief wicket-taker on the just completed tour? That he is in with a real chance of becoming the region's chief wicket-taker in Tests?

Of such insensitive stuff, I found myself thinking, are new dispensations made. So if we are to save the game in the region, we may have to dispense with Rousseau and his new team.

And we also have to keep open the option of dispensing with the star baby along with the bathwater.

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