West Indies heartbreak continues

Shivnarine Chanderpaul's inexperienced side have problems that go beyond the cricket field © AFP

The contrast is stark, its effect distressing.

A three-week holiday break in England afforded the chance to enjoy, at first hand, the remarkable resurgence of cricket in the land where it was born and raised but where, for a variety of reasons, it had been increasingly overshadowed by more fashionable competitors.

The widespread euphoria generated by the pulsating Ashes series-and, more specifically, the triumphs of a home team that had been Australia's whipping boys for 17 years-makes the comparison with the continuing catastrophic state of West Indies cricket heartbreaking.

While Freddie Flintoff has replaced David Beckham as England's sporting idol and football has given way on the front, back and middle pages of newspapers to cricket's positive news, what the West Indian media has been reporting has nothing to do with the play.

It concentrates more on the bickering, backbiting and bitchiness that have brought a sport, once our pride and joy, to its knees.

The names that now hog the headlines are not of current cricketing heroes but mostly of ageing business executives, high court justices and bankers without even the most modest playing credentials.

Already crippled by its relentless row with the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) that led to a strike by the best players and the dispatch in July of keen but unprepared replacements for Test and one-day series in Sri Lanka, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), now under its fourth president in six years, finds itself distracted by a couple of untimely internal administrative disturbances.

Details of the not so Lucky Report, prematurely distributed to strategic outlets even before its presentation to the body that commissioned it, and the resignation of Rawle Brancker as chairman of the company overseeing preparations for World Cup 2007 is the copy that has filled Caribbean newspapers and airwaves.

They have both laid bare the well-known incompetence and intrigue that afflicts most West Indian institutions, not just cricket. At the same time, they have deflected attention away from what remains the most pressing issue facing the game in a region where its once fanatical following is fast declining.

Particulars of the murky negotiations over the sponsorship switch from Cable & Wireless to Digicel, and the WICB's promised response to its committee's findings, will no doubt make as fascinating reading when released later this week as Brancker's assertions about the goings-on within ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 Inc.

Already, the former situation has been further complicated by the revelation that the two colleagues on his committee have "disassociated" themselves from some of their chairman's conclusions.

Those familiar with such inquiries into other areas of Caribbean life will not find this surprising.

As significant as they are in their own ways, neither the Lucky Report-or reports, as the case may be-nor the World Cup upheavals will directly impact on what is the central cause for the plight of West Indies cricket, the fractured relations between the board and the players.

The problem dates back several decades but has reached the stage where a team stripped of its best players has had to represent the West Indies in Tests and one-day internationals. More seriously, it has led to such bitter animosity between former teammates, between those who rejected and those who accepted the WICB's contractural terms for the recent tour of Sri Lanka, that the word "scab" has entered the lexicon of West Indies cricket.

The WICB and the WIPA have argued over the issue until blue in the face, without either seemingly aware that each is digging its own grave with its intransigence.

The impasse has existed for ten months.

As one side blames the other through strongly worded public statements, the other retorts even more vehemently. In spite of the intervention of prime ministers and chief justices, it has got them nowhere.

The last time we heard, the wrangle over two clauses in the WICB's offered tour agreement remained unresolved. Nor were proposed central contracts for leading players any closer. There has been no news of resumed negotiations either.

The name Justice Adrian Saunders, who was long since expected to pass a binding ruling on the issue, has simply faded into the background.

The plain truth is that the situation cannot continue as it is. Ken Gordon, the WICB's new president, should know that he has no more urgent task than bringing the matter to an end.

The signs are not encouraging. His decision to take Brancker's place as head of the World Cup board suggests his priorities are elsewhere. Indeed, the WICB has announced plans for a six-day preparation camp for three Tests in Australia in November as if everything is normal. They clearly aren't.

Each of the last three such camps-last December prior to the VB Series in Australia, last March in preparation for the home series against South Africa and in June for the tour of Sri Lanka-have been overshadowed by doubts over the status of several of those chosen.

Uncertainty over which players are available to them from one series to the next has completely undermined the work of head coach Bennett King and his support staff, hired at considerable expense and with great fanfare almost a year ago.

The detailed plans for future development drawn up by King and manager Tony Howard have had to be placed on hold as a result.

For all the spirit, commitment and unity demonstrated in Sri Lanka by the hastily-assembled reserves it would be a travesty to subject them, and West Indies cricket, to the certain embarrassment of three Tests against Australia on their home patch. More to the point, the West Indies without their best players will become more and more of an irrelevancy to their own public and to the millions outside who once held them in such high esteem.

There is continuing evidence as well that our most venerated players have either chosen to escape the quagmire into which the game is disappearing or else been rejected by those uncomfortable in their presence.

Last month, the most successful of all West Indies captains, Clive Lloyd, sought to serve as vice-president of the board and was duly nominated.

The pairing of an eminent and internationally respected cricketer and Gordon, the savvy media executive, seemed an ideal leadership combination.

Instead, the incumbent, Val Banks, an Anguillan banker who is now serving under his third president, was retained on a narrow 8-6 majority.

The Jamaican directors who supported him did so, they said, "in the interests of continuity". Surely the last thing the WICB needs is a continuation of the administrative ineptness for which it has become noted.

The current edition of The Wisden Cricketer, the game's best-selling magazine, carries an article under the headline: "Worst Indies".

"From being the most crowd-pleasing, dominant, virile force in world cricket, West Indies are now embittered and impotent, involved in an embarrassing and seemingly interminable contracts row and relying on Bangladesh and Zimbabwe to hold them up in the Test rankings".

These are hurtful words that cannot be refuted. The condition obviously cannot be changed overnight but reconciliation between board and players is the only place to start-and soon.