HERE was a distinct sense of de ja vu to the front page picture in Tuesday’s DAILY NATION, as there has been throughout the newest, unseemly quarrel between the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA).
There was Dinanath Ramnarine, the WIPA’s perennial president and chief executive, smiling and shaking hands with Julian Hunte, latest of the four presidents who have headed the WICB in the first decade of the 21st century. In the middle was the obligatory high profile Caribbean politician, this time the president of Guyana, Bharat Jagdeo.
The photo opportunity was to signify the agreement between the two, brokered by Jagdeo, to turn yet another of their numerous disagreements that have all but wrecked West Indies cricket over to Sir Sridath Ramphal, as credentialed and influential an international figure as there is in the cricket-playing Caribbean, for mediation.
Ramnarine has been there several times before. Only the personnel on the other side have changed, repeatedly. For Jagdeo, insert Keith Mitchell, for Hunte read Ken Gordon, Teddy Griffith, Wes Hall or lower WICB operatives like Roger Brathwaite, Donald Peters and, briefly, Bruce Aanansen.
In each case, the conflicts were determined by arbitration. The WIPA, as it repeatedly affirms, won them all but there were Phyrric victories. They did nothing to halt the decline of West Indies cricket.
Ramphal’s task is somewhat different to earlier intermediaries. It is to mediate (“to intercede, or intervene, for the purpose of reconciling” according to the Oxford English dictionary) rather than arbitrate (“to give an authoritative decision, to determine”).
His remit is to bring the warring parties to their senses, to stress the devastation their policies have inflicted on the one endeavour identified as proudly and uniquely West Indian for more than 100 years and, between them, to devise a long-term solution to the problems that divide them.
As Michael Holding and Aanansen, a transitory WICB chief executive, noted during the week, there can be no quick fix.
Both have advised that the formula used by Cricket Australia and other regional boards be copied. They note that they are all “very equitable” (Holding’s phrase) in relation to their players and that they work to the satisfaction of both parties.
Aanansen’s take is that the current issues “are but a reflection of the underlying fundamental problems that have caused similar standoffs over the years” and that they will continue so long as lasting solutions are not found.
“I would like to suggest, that rather than fill in the cracks, plaster over the top and put a new coat of paint, to make the relationship look new, that you ask for some time to deliver a long-term solution to the problems,” he wrote in an open letter to Ramphal on Friday.
It is a necessary accommodation that should be obvious to reasonable, intelligent men.
The trouble is that reason and intelligence have given way to egotism, disunity, greed and, as Holding alluded to, vengeance in most areas of West Indies cricket. Its very future depends on whether Ramphal can devise a formula to restore them.
In the present environment, it is a task as delicate as any he would have tackled in his 15 years as Commonwealth Secretary-General.
The animosity and distrust between the two organizations he has been charged to bring to reconciliation runs long and deep. Instant resolutions to the issues that divide them have not worked and never will. The record attests to that. In April 2006, for instance, the WICB advised players that if they did not sign retainer contracts within a week “thereafter the team shall be selected based on those who make themselves available”.
Ramnarine countered that he was in favour of such contracts but was “very shocked and surprised” by the ultimatum since he had to get a mandate from his members first.
Sound familiar? It should. Three years on, it is precisely the cause of the current mess.
Even when the two have signed solemn peace accords, they have been as useless as the paper they are written on.
On August 8, 2006, in the aftermath of the boycott of the tour of Sri Lanka a year earlier by the leading players and the later showdown over retainer contracts, Ramnarine and Ken Gordon signed the following Agreement of Principles. “Whereas the WICB and WIPA each recognize their common interest in the development and success of West Indies cricket; whereas the relationship in the past has been one of conflict and controversy, a situation which is inimical to West Indies cricket, particularly for the growth and development of the game in the Caribbean, WICB and WIPA now agree that:
*Both parties commit themselves to a new dispensation of cooperation pledging to work together to dispose of all outstanding matters no later that August 31, 2006.
*In this spirit of cooperation, both parties further commit themselves to resort to public statements on controversial issues only after every reasonable effort has been made to resolve differences internally.
*Both parties recognize there is a dispute resolution process, as in contained in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) which will be signed on August 31, 2006, and emphasize their commitment to follow the process.
*Both parties commit themselves to engage in a relationship of mutual respect and the honoring of all agreements arrived at between the parties.”
No doubt, Ramphal would be aware of this document and how quickly its sentiments were consumed by ingrained confrontation.
He would also be conscious of the similar fate of the report on the governance of West Indies cricket, commissioned by the WICB itself and prepared by a committee headed by P.J.Patterson, the former Jamaican prime minister.
Its recommendations for restructuring the organisation have been completely disregarded, as was presaged by Hunte in his first comments as new president.
“Some say that the board has outlived its usefulness in terms of taking West Indies cricket to a high level,” he said at the time. “I definitely do not share this view”.
That was two years ago. It has become even more obvious in the interim that the board, in its present form, has, indeed, outlived its usefulness. Its mandate is to take West Indies cricket “to a high level” and it has patently failed to so.
Quite apart from the disruption caused by the intransigence and militancy of the WIPA, that it is only now properly confronting, it is has been responsible for a host of other failures unconnected to that relationship.
It is pertinent that, for all the turnover of its presidents, vice-presidents, directors and chief executives, the situation has got no better. The time is long past for change, in the board’s structure, as recommended by the Patterson Report, and in the WIPA’s attitude. It is a point Ramphal must get across to those who continue to resist it.
