Talk about getting off on the wrong foot!
The West Indies cricket team begins their tour of Sri Lanka tomorrow taking on a Sri Lanka President’s XI in a three-day fixture at Colombo with a new captain, an interim coach and the age-old problem of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) at odds with one of its subjects.
This tour is no different.
They have a new captain in Jason Holder, an interim coach in Eldine Baptiste and a new problem with regular coach Phil Simmons.
The tour match was supposed to have begun today but has been pushed back one day because of weather concerns.
The weather though, is the least of the team’s problems.
Holder, already the one-day skipper, replaced Denesh Ramdin as test captain, a move that angered some officials (not only from Trinidad and Tobago) while interim coach Baptiste, is caught in the crossfire surrounding Simmons simply because it is felt that there are others who would have been better suited for the task.
While both Holder and Baptiste will be looking to make a success of their positions, the events that preceded the tour will certainly not help their cause.
Simmons, appointed West Indies coach in March this year, waits with a cloud of things uncertain if not ominous hanging over his head.
He has been accused of a breach of confidentiality following his outspoken comments on the selection of the one-day team to tour Sri Lanka named on September 23 and suspended for the time being.
Simmons had informed media operatives, that himself and chairman of the selection panel Clive Lloyd, were in favour of the return to the one-day squad of Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard but that outside interference prevented them from being selected.
Not surprisingly the WICB reacted swiftly by suspending Simmons, stopping him from travelling with the team to Sri Lanka and installing Baptiste in his place.
Incidentally, Baptiste, a member of the selection panel, had applied for the post of West Indies coach but had lost out to Simmons, a fact from which one could draw whatever conclusion one wants to.
A scheduled hearing between Simmons and the Human Resources Department of the WICB Saturday failed to come off and the matter has been postponed.
Like is customary with the WICB, a new date for the meeting has not been set even as the tour goes ahead, sort of a Nero fiddling while Rome burns scenario.
Given the issues preceding the tour, West Indies’ hopes of a first ever series win in Sri Lanka seem farfetched.
The players selected are a mixture of experience and youth and it is clear that by continuing to omit Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s that the WICB seems to be in rebuilding mode.
Be that as it may, given the composition of the test team and the Simmons situation one is not sure what frame of mind the players will be in as they take on the Sri Lankans in the first of two test matches next Wednesday.
As rebuilding goes, Lloyd seems to be selecting players who are, among other things, committed to the process of helping to restore West Indies cricket to the good old glory days, days he was a part of, though one is not sure whether Bravo and Pollard fit that particular bill.
However, it would appear that not all the West Indies selectors are singing from the same page or probably feel that way about the two especially since Bravo played a key role in the West Indies team’s withdrawal from their tour on India last year.
Simmons, though, seems to be mindful of the fact that the performance of the team has a direct bearing on his tenure as coach and would clearly like to have players he considers the best, chosen.
There are some who see a correlation between the performances of the team and the administration of the sport in the region.
Poor administration, they argue, results in poor performances.
In an excellent piece on cricket administration Gideon Haigh, writing in the Cricket Monthly states: ”Cricket’s administration has been the preserve of men of middling talent and limited ambition concerned chiefly to inure cricket against change.”
One hopes that this particular quote is not lost on Dave Cameron and the rest of the WICB executive.
The Cameron-led WICB has not been a howling success in the administration of the region’s number one sport. Far from it.
Cameron was president when the West Indies team walked off a tour of India last year in protest to the Collective Bargaining Agreement the West Indies Players Association had signed with the WICB among other things.
That abrupt and shocking withdrawal led to compensation claims by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to the tune of some US$42.
Up to now the money has not been paid nor has any official of the WICB been held culpable. The players too, to the best of one’s knowledge, have not been openly sanctioned although some of the players were omitted for the team to the World Cup on cricket grounds.
Not only is the WICB unable or reluctant to lay down the law to its errant cricketers, the board seems also incapable of attracting sponsorship for its major competitions.
As a result, the long term future of the PCL and CPL tournaments are cause for concern.
In the midst of all this the WICB has repeatedly ignored the need for restructuring the organization in an attempt to foster better governance on its affiliates as advocated by two separate reports the Patterson Committee Report and the Wilkins Report.
Rather, it continues to act as if West Indies cricket is the board’s personal fiefdom.
Like most sports organizations in Third World countries, the WICB seems unable or unwilling to be accountable and to make decisions which would result in the betterment of all concerned with the sport.
Cricket is imbedded in the psyche of the peoples of the region and the WICB is providing a disservice even as the people, the regional governments, the International Cricket Council (ICC) and other interested parties look on hoping for some intervention (probably of a divine nature) that would result in a better functioning board and a return to world supremacy.
The future of West Indies cricket is at stake or is it?
