West Indies cricket in a hole

The ICC's Dave Richardson has proposed that Test cricket be divided into two tiers. Based on rankings and the current WICB and WIPA disagreement, it is quite possible that West Indies find themselves in the lower rungs of international cricket. Trinidad and Tobago Express reports.

The most highly-paid players ever in the history of West Indies cricket and, arguably, the greatest underachievers, are again at loggerheads with the administrative managers of the game here with money once again being central to the dispute, the latest incarnation of the WICB seemingly unable to arrive at a series of systems that would have forestalled the kind of international embarrassment occasioned by a players' strike at the onset of what was supposed to have been a team-fortifying tournament.

It cost the West Indies public millions of dollars to get the islands into shape to host the 2007 World Cup. Taxpayers' money runs West Indies cricket and the Jamaica Gleaner feels the boycott by the players and the inefficiency of the WICB is nothing more than an attempt to hold the game hostage.

The West Indian fans are not a happy lot, as is seen in this letter to the editor in the Jamaica Gleaner from a disgruntled Caribbean supporter. The fan gives his point of view on how to tackle the current row, and how to avoid a repeat in future.

I am at the point where I refuse to hold any one party responsible, as I believe that both sides have been withholding from us, thus making it easy for the members of the public to take sides without necessarily being fully informed.

Why can't each party, for example, devise individual codes of ethics and mission statements (even if they are overused terms) and see where there are clashes of interests, work them out and then make a joint statement, which everyone should be able to live by? For consistency, individual territory associations should have compatible statements and policies.

An editorial in the Jamaica Observer argues that the WIPA-WICB dispute is not merely one of a worker against an employer.

There is a deep emotional connection between English-speaking Caribbean people and their West Indies cricket team. It is grounded in history and culture. Stakeholders in cricket who act without proper cognisance of the people who support the game are on a hopelessly wrong path.