By Orin Davidson
Clive Lloyd virtually never laid a bat wrong or crafted a bad strategy during his time captaining the West Indies team.
That was more than 25 years ago. Now, when his influence is badly needed in West Indies cricket, the former captain is coming up short.
Lloyd seems to have lost the killer instinct as an observer these days, which he employed to telling effect in his playing heydays that led West Indies to an unprecedented unbeaten Test series campaign for 15 long years.
In joining the chorus of criticism levelled at current West Indies captain Chris Gayle for arriving two days before the current Test series in England, after he fulfilled his contractual commitment to the Kolkata team of the India Premier League (IPL), Lloyd merely scratched the surface of a problem that is far deeper than Gayle’s apparent disregard for the importance of his position. In normal circumstances Gayle would be entirely culpable, but Lloyd failed to finger the real culprit that created this detestable situation – the West Indies Cricket Board.
Gayle was not the party that agreed to make this tour happen and then went on to sign the IPL contract afterwards. Lloyd and all the other critics must be aware it was the WICB which decided it was in the best interest of West Indies cricket to fill in for Sri Lanka’s withdrawal for England, to contest a series in alien winter-like conditions to the players.
The WICB’s deplorable decision to undertake a difficult tour a mere two months after winning the Wisden trophy for the first time in nine years, is highlighted by the fact that apart from Gayle, four other team players were committed to IPL teams. Subsequently it was the WICB which permitted Gayle and the others to arrive a mere four days before the first Test from the IPL.
You have to ask the magnitude of difference between four days and two days – which Gayle eventually had after he decided to stay on for one more IPL game, preparation for the England series? It is wholly inadequate on both counts and was a WICB call, not the players’. Lloyd, however, went on to scold the player, which might not be totally unjustified, but by overlooking the main villain, which once again happens to be the WICB, Lloyd’s views come across highly skewed.
It was also the Board’s call to allow one of the five IPL contracted team members Dwayne Bravo, who happens to be its best all-rounder, to miss the entire Test series on the ludicrous grounds of him being unfit for the two matches, but good enough for one month of frenetic Twenty/20 competition.
While lamenting Bravo’s absence, you would’ve expected Lloyd to come out more strongly than he did in condemning this preposterous decision, than he did.
He claimed not to know the whole story on the Bravo affair, but surely he ought to be aware that the primary reason for the players’ affiliation with the IPL is to maximize their earnings. And no one understands the importance of money better than the former captain himself who was one of the first to sign up for the controversial Kerry Packer series, back in the day.
He may be a director of the WICB, but it ought not make Lloyd immune from making his voice heard on the long list on continuing Board blunders that are threatening to wipe out the tremendous legacy of success he built with the team.
Lloyd is fully qualified to critique the board in public regardless of whether he is a director-at-large or not. His knowledge of the game is so far superior to those of the decision makers on cricketing issues within the WICB, he could school the whole lot of them in that regard, possibly with the exception of Deryck Murray and Joel Garner, who Lloyd happened to captain on the WI team.
Here is a mini list of among other issues, the disgusted supporters of West Indies cricket want to hear Lloyd criticize. 1) The failure of the Board to setup a proper domestic playing structure to hone the enormous talent existing in the Region after a lifetime of existence. 2) The Board’s inability to offer retainer contracts to team members. 3) The Board’s negligence in organizing consistent A team tours. 3) The lack of academies after all these years; 4) The inability of the Board to orchestrate a plan to have proper pitches prepared for all matches under its jurisdiction as opposed to the slow graveyard types that dominate the territories that help neither batsmen or bowlers. 5) The day-to- day bloopers the Board commits, like the abandonment of the Antigua Test, and the neglect that caused the extremely costly financial sponsorship court case lost to Digicel. 6) The wanton waste of financial resources and the inability to generate substantial revenue after all these years. These days the Board has a president who seems quite satisfied to travel around the world without seeming to make Board issues at home a priority. He travels around to almost every international assignment the West Indies team is engaged, in first class accommodation and does not seem to miss a single International Cricket Council (ICC) function. And as far as the public knows, Julian Hunte does not have a special personal sponsor to cover those costs.
You have to wonder if he spends anytime at the St Lucia office he went to such lengths to renovate that caused a permanent rift with him and the Board’s ex-CEO over the financing.
These are the more pertinent issues fans want to hear Lloyd and other influential ex-players vent about publicly.
Only then the dysfunctional WICB might change for the better.
