Cozier on Sunday
West Indies cricket continues to self destruct.
Given the damage inflicted in the past couple of weeks, on and off the field, it seems to be getting ever more proficient at it.
In that brief period, all of the afflictions that have dragged it to its present parlous state – the lack of self confidence, the curse of indiscipline, the disregard for fitness and the crisis of administration – have all been revealed.
The clean sweeps of the recent Twenty20 and ODI series by South Africa were not entirely surprising.
After all, the ODI results were the same in the previous two series against the South Africans, in 2005 here and 2008 there, so too in both short-game versions in Australia back in February.
The difference this time was that the contests were far closer.
In Australia, the four completed ODIs produced humiliating defeats by 113 runs, eight wickets, 50 runs and 125 runs, in the two Twenty20s by 38 runs and eight wickets.
Now, the margins in three of the seven matches were down to one run (in the second Twenty20) and off the last and penultimate balls (in the fourth and fifth ODIs).
Such narrow losses made it all the more exasperating. As captain Chris Gayle put it, “losing is becoming a habit…that is a bit difficult to get out of.”
Repeating what Brian Lara had observed some years earlier, Gayle attributed the condition to “a mental situation.”
It goes with the physical weakness responsible for the injuries that have swept through the team like some contagious disease.
Because of frail, underprepared bodies, the West Indies must make do for the three forthcoming Tests without at least four players (Ramnaresh Sarwan, Jerome Taylor, Adrian Barath and Fidel Edwards) and another (Nikita Miller) who might well have been there.
These are heavy burdens. When compounded by the defiant attitude to authority that led captain Gayle to dismiss Sulieman Benn, a serial offender, from the field in the fourth ODI in Dominica and by the astonishing censure of the team and the players by Ernest Hilaire, the chief executive on the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), they become unbearable.
The situation assumes an even more sinister dimension with the addition of the disconcerting developments within the Guyana Cricket Board , a vital founder-member of the WICB, that have allegedly led to the diligent assistant treasurer having acid thrown into face and, subsequently, to the unprecedented intervention of the government to sort things out.
Like a long line of his predecessors, Gayle has had a difficult time in his post, even though his batting has assumed a new sense of responsibility reflected in an increase in his Test batting average of eight runs an innings since his appointment three years ago.
While he does not have complete support throughout the Caribbean, one of his perceived advantages was that he was admired by his players. Yet, over time, he has come to recognise that not everyone in the boat is pulling the oars with the same vigour.
When Benn, already with a string of indiscretions on his card, refused his instructions to bowl over the wicket, the captain had come to the end of his tether.
He despatched him off the field and, in the public forum of the televised after-match presentation, announced as much.
He might have kept it in house and attributed the left-arm spinner’s absence to a knee problem (which is what the umpires understood). But he was clearly angered by such rebelliousness within the ranks. I can think of dozens of captains who would have done exactly the same.
Yet Benn remains in the team, not suspended but punished by the withdrawal of his entire match fee.
It will be an intriguing sub-plot to the match to observe how he and Gayle – and, indeed, the team as a whole – interact when they play together again, probably on Thursday in the first Test.
In the modern way, Benn apparently sees himself as his own man, not to be dictated to be anyone, not even the captain.
It was instructive that, as the players flew out of Trinidad to their various points across the Caribbean after the ODI series, all wore the red polo shirts carrying the team sponsor’s insignia – all, that is, except Benn who sported a black T-shirt.
Given his history, such conduct was not unexpected. Hilaire’s assertions certainly were.
In a very public, duly YouTubed discussion on West Indies cricket at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies two weeks ago, Hilaire advised that we should expect three more years of “embarrassment” from the team, said that the present players were more interested in money and bling that in achieving excellence and claimed that almost half the under-19 could barely read or write.
“The simple fact is that we are producing cricketers who are not capable of being world-beaters in cricket. It’s just a simple fact,” he stated.
Hilaire is in a special position. He is charged with “Transforming West Indies cricket”, the title of a recently published document extolling the WICB’s plans for the future and aiming to entice sponsors who have departed, one by one, in the past few years.
His was apparently a mental aberration, what is known in business circles as “doing a Ratner”.
Gerald Ratner was the head of Britain’s largest chain of costume jewellery stores when he made a speech to the Institute of Directors in 1991. In it, he explained that his company was able to sell merchandise at low prices “because it’s total crap.”
Not surprisingly, the value of the Ratner’s group immediately plummeted by around 500 million pounds and it almost went bankrupt before changing its name to Signet.
Ironically, Ratner was known as “The Sultan of Bling”, a sobriquet that is applicable to a host of modern cricketers, not just West Indian.
Predictably under pressure from the West Indies Players Association to apologise and widely criticised for his remarks, Hilaire has already engaged in damage limitation.
As Gerald Ratner discovered, it will be difficult to wriggle out of this one but he has an opportunity this evening at the opening of the High Performance Centre at the Cave Hill campus, a ball’s throw away from where he delivered his controversial comments.
It is the High Performance Centre on which he is placing his hopes for preparing the next generation that will drag West Indies cricket out of its “embarrassment and a lot of awfulness.”
It is a mammoth task.
