IN last Wednesday’s Midweek Nation sports special, my fellow columnist, Andi Thornhill, abandoned the hackneyed cliché that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” in favour of a more appropriate sporting analogy.
He likened the task ahead for Joel Garner after his reelection as president of the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) to that of a track relay.
“Teamwork has to be at the forefront to achieve the goals that have been set,” he wrote. “You don’t necessarily need to have strength on each leg to succeed but you do need every runner to perform the role he’s been assigned to the best of his ability. The syncronisation of effort could deliver the designated results.”
The American athletes at the recent IAAF World Championships in Beijing know full well the truth of Thornhill’s point. They botched the final changeover in the men’s 4×100 metres and held a commanding lead in the women’s 4×400 before the brilliant Usain Bolt and Novline Williams-Mills, a runner who performed the role to which she was assigned, powered through the last leg for another Jamaican triumph.
In a cricketing sense, West Indies have been utterly devoid of such cohesion; overcome by insularity and inept, headstrong leadership, they’ve been repeatedly let down by the bungling of their divided teams.
For two decades, such problems have left them trailing at the back of the field. Often, they don’t even cross the finish line.
Garner’s aim should be obvious. It is, as Thornhill put it, “to unite his organisation so that cricket’s best interest will be served”.
Not necessarily in order, cricket’s relay squad presently comprises the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the incumbent president, Dave Cameron, now effectively one and the same thing, the six territorial boards, such as that Garner once more heads, the players and a mix of the public and Caricom governments.
Not only is their coordination repeatedly chaotic, it often appears to be deliberately so.
When the WICB itself commissioned a report by a group headed by former Jamaica prime minister P.J. Patterson to recommend changes to its governance, it pointedly dropped the baton when it was handed over; the same reaction followed after a committee headed by St Kitts-Nevis Queen’s Counsel Charles Wilkin was charged with a similar assignment five years later.
Over the past year, the change-overs have been more chaotic and costly. West Indies were scarcely out of their blocks in a potentially lucrative contest in India last October when the board and the players combined to call a halt to their participation. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) blamed the WICB for breaching “a binding contract” and threatened a still pending claim for US$42 million compensation.
The WICB’s response was to drop One-Day International (ODI) captain Dwayne Bravo, the players’ spokesman, who had been involved in two similar previous strikes, and to repeatedly and unconvincingly state that negotiations were continuing between the two boards.
Subsequent widespread calls for his replacement as head of the team were shrewdly resisted by Cameron. After directors of his own Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) voted for Garner instead, the general body summoned a meeting that overruled the decision and reinstated Cameron as their man.
The sentiments of a column in a Jamaica newspaper by Dr Franklyn Johnston, an advisor to a government minister, emphasised the insularity that hinders the cohesion of West Indies cricket.
“A vote for Garner is a vote against Jamaica. Be not intimidated by Anglophone ‘micro chips’. Dave Cameron for president!,” Dr Johnston wrote.
“We are in the Greater Antilles, neighbour of Haiti, DR, Cuba, Puerto Rico; birthplace of Bob, Usain, Shelly-Ann; sons of Bogle, Garvey, Gordon, Manley, Sharpe, Busta; daughters of Nanny; refuge of Bolivar and Maceo de Graceles. I love West Indian heritage, but I love Jamaica. Viva Jamaica!”
Two weeks ago, Cameron announced that Billie Heaven, president of the JCA, whose directors had supported Garner as president, would have to answer some obscure charge before the ethics committee.
Heaven denies he has ever received any communication on the matter from the WICB; there has been no further comment from Cameron.
More recently, a strongly worded rift has developed between Cameron and the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TCCB), one of the six WICB shareholders, ostensibly over the bypassing of Trinidad as venue for Cameron’s Caribbean-wide series of town hall meetings.
Patrick Rampersad, a TTCB vice-president, called it “disrespectful and dismissive of the local cricket community”; he hinted that it might be linked to the joint, unsuccessful challenge of Garner and TTCB president Azim Bassarath against Cameron and vice-president Emmanuel Nanthan in the WICB elections.
In the meantime, Grenada Prime Minister Keith Mitchell has told the newly Caricom-appointed panel to once more review the state of governance of West Indies cricket that it can no longer be business as usual. He charged it with making clear recommendations on the way forward and acting on them.
It’s one last attempt at producing the smooth coordination necessary to produce shared success. Given recent history, prospects are not encouraging.