Dear Editor,
Reading recently about an exceptional performance by Xavier Marshall in a fete match in New York, got me thinking about Marshall himself, Garrick, Barath, Kieron Powell, Pagon, Jerome Taylor and other talented cricketers who have apparently either left the game or almost left, and the reasons for their departure.
I remember being told that Lara, the master, Captain of Trinidad, accompanied Garrick off the field after the latter had played a masterful innings for Jamaica. I wonder why, in an area with comparatively so few people, so many cricketers ‘retire’ before maturity. I offer a hypothesis, that, if correct, can point to a remedy or remedies.
It was a foreign journalist who visited Anthony Martin at his workplace, who clarified to fans that Martin was really a fireman, rather than a policeman as he was generally thought to be. Another foreign journalist (or was it the same person?) visited Marlon Samuels at home. From him I learnt that Samuels had left home at fourteen, and that he considered his several dogs his only reliable friends. The journalist or journalists thought these players important.
What prevented a cricket official, during the four years that Taylor was out of the game, to arrange a dinner engagement (lunch would be too short) with him, to discuss cricket, find out why he “appeared” not to be working on his recovery, and how he could be helped? Similar approaches to Barath, Powell and others could yield good results.
Such an approach requires cricket officials to see the cricketers as important people even when not on the field. In some places, such people are sometimes coddled, and always encouraged. We learnt that the WICB delegated Pybus to communicate with Powell when the latter seemed to have lost interest. Powell reported that Pybus wanted details of his personal problems. Wrong delegate! Wrong approach!
Unfortunately it seems that once a WI cricketer leaves the playing field, he is seen as a nobody, who, in the best of circumstances, needs to be disciplined.
To even think of cajoling a young talented cricketer is, at best, seen as a sign of weakness, if not clear evidence of imbecility.
In a world in which the moulders of public opinion consider wealth the only measure of true value, a WI cricketer who accepts an IPL contract for sums of money formerly unheard of by cricketers, rather than make himself available for selection to a WI team that may or may not select him, is, for some strange reason, branded as greedy and unpatriotic. They are ridiculed for wearing the same jewellery used by other young entertainers.
That attitude might extend far beyond the bounds of the WIBC. After all, the players I mentioned earlier were not treated differently by their national boards.
The handling of coach Simmons’ intemperate outburst when he must have been unbelievably frustrated, illustrates clearly a mindset that places a premium on putting cricketers in their proper place, even if it means sending the team the day after the event, on a tour without the coach, whom most people thought was having a real impact.
Can anything be done? Maybe an idea like the High Performance Centre for players can be utilized, with night classes at the universities for managers to pursue studies in people management, where those managers will be exposed to studies in psychology and sociology, and West Indian history and disciplines of that nature.
It is critical that those managers learn the skills necessary to preserve and cultivate scarce talent.
Yours faithfully,
Romain Pitt
