AT THE RECENTLY concluded annual conference of the Caribbean Studies Association in Barbados, Dr Ernest Hilaire, chief executive officer of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), spoke with great passion and verve about our West Indies cricket team, echoing all the pride and disappointments West Indians have felt for the team over the years.
His thoughts were sincere and offered in a constructive manner with a view to strengthening the team and enhancing our collective pride. Alas, there are those who prefer to bury their heads in the sand, to blame individual board members or individual cricketers for the long drought we have been experiencing.
While there are always disagreements and alternative takes on board decisions, while even the very best players are sometimes known to be “out of form”, while fans could be fickle, cricket is a team sport and any assessment of the team’s performance must take as its point of departure the wider context.
That wider context is the West Indian society and culture to which Dr Hilaire made reference.
Ours is a dependent capitalist region where the young people have imbibed all the narrow, narcissistic behaviours that are associated with the flashiness of North American and Western European sporting events and their stars.
It is a reality in which instant gratification is mixed with materialist and individualist sensibilities, and where our young players have come to measure their worth in dollar terms. This is not to blame the individual players, but rather to understand the soil out of which they spring.
