Disgraceful is putting it mildly, rather the circumstances surrounding Guyana’s shock withdrawal from the West Indies T20 Championship is an abominable dereliction of national duty.
It has taken the administration of Guyana’s cricket country to its lowest ebb, resulting in a reputation severely tarnished, which by West Indies standards is pretty abject given the deplorable handling of the sport by the regional ruling body – the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).
The blame has to be shared in abundance all around, mainly by the two warring bodies – the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport and those individuals linked in between.
It was the GCB’s call to pull the plug on the team’s participation and the excuse it proffered is as lame as they come.
Through its secretary Anand Sanasie, the board explained that it was locked out of its own office by the Ministry which padlocked the doors to the Regent Street premises.
According to the Board secretary, they were unable to access documents and uniforms to facilitate the team’s attendance at the championships.
Well, one can shoot so many holes through this porous defence, Ransford Goodluck would have a field day at the Timehri Rifleshooting Ranges.
It is no secret that the Guyana Cricket Board office is located on private property, and no outside party, be it the Office of the President or the Ministry responsible for Sport, has the right to trespass on the said premises, much less padlock the doors.
Many strange things are possible these days in Guyana, but surely the GCB’s home did not become a sub-division of the Ministry’s Main Street fortress overnight.
All Sanasie and company needed to do was remove the illegal padlocks, as there are many locksmith and carpenter cricket fans out there, who would be willing to do the job for free, if it meant getting the national team to play.
Or if the Board needed to make a public spectacle of the issue, it could’ve gone to the courts to effect entry to its premises; with the same alacrity it got its trustees to challenge the Ministry’s bid to dissolve the executive.
More so, the Board has so many other avenues to effect the team’s processing, its excuse becomes more laughable by the minute, the more you think about it. Every executive member has a home with telephones that could’ve been used to communicate. Also the fact that the GCB has its parent body, the WICB on its side, makes it much easier for a GCB request to the WICB to make alternative arrangements for the Guyana team, to be accepted.
And as the crisis intensified, it seemingly went unnoticed by new GCB president Ramsey Ali. Up to the time of writing, not a word of anger or wisdom has been expressed in the media by this obviously reluctant leader of the national body.
It is the ideal time for him to show leadership qualities, and stuff his critics by fighting tooth and nail to give his country’s team another chance to bring more fame to the country and fortune to the players and Board, in the most lucrative and popular competition in the Region.
Given certain developments in the last few weeks within the Board and Sanasie’s show of one-upman-ship, you wonder if the roles of secretary and president have been reversed overnight.
A little more than two years ago when Guyana’s – then the West Indies T20 champs, elevation to the India Cricket Board’s lucrative Champions League, was placed in jeopardy due to the player-contract problem, initiated by the West Indies Players Association (WIPA), it was the President Chetram Singh who spearheaded efforts to eventually resolve the problem.
Why Ali seems prepared to remain hidden in Sanasie’s shadow and allow a major implosion to damage the Board’s credibility, very early on his watch, is anybody’s guess.
Yet this tepid approach by the GCB could give rise to cynical conclusions of personal agendas influencing it.
If it is a deliberate ploy by one or more Board members to terminate Guyana’s participation, primarily to hit back at the Ministry for its attempt to remove the executive, then the perpetrator or perpetrators deserve nothing less than a lengthy ban from cricket. Over the years the administration of Guyana’s sport has been so deeply infested with opportunists, concerned only with a quest for power and perks, it beggars belief. This could be one of the prime examples.
Given Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Frank Anthony’s central role in the events involving the Interim Management Committee, he is just as culpable for Guyana’s T20 non-participation. The decision to illegally lock down the Board office, smacks of an administration out of control. It will surely wreck his attempt to install the IMC.
Also, you have to wonder why Clive Lloyd’s influence could not have induced more sober actions by the Ministry, given his appointment by the Minister as his IMC chairman.
Here we have the most revered cricketer of his generation, the man who once moulded the West Indies team as captain, into an undefeated world beating force for 15 straight years, who is now renowned as an upstanding world cricket statesman, again in retirement, batting well within his crease in a crisis situation.
His status and influence are unmatched, but over the years Lloyd has been using it like a tank top in winter, as West Indies cricket lurched from one disaster to another. It has been left to Lloyd’s stars of the 1980s, Vivian Richards, Michael Holding and Andy Roberts, to raise all the hell, as the “Skipper” stayed silent.
Guyanese and West Indians have grown weary of Lloyd’s political correctness.
At a time when the most devoted of West Indian fans, whose hopes are about to be crushed with their Amazon Jaguars eliminated from the T20 Cup without lifting a bat, Guyanese need their compatriot Lloyd to step out of that crease and bat for Guyana’s cricket.
He has what it takes to get Guyana back into the Cup through his heavy contacts inside and out of the country, even at this late stage.
Surely the thought of Guyana, one of the founders of Regional cricket, which hosted the Region’s very first Test match, which won numerous titles, which produced some of West Indies’ best players ever, being reduced to status lower than the 1960s and ‘70s Combined Islands, or Windward or Leewards Islands, who were never unable to field teams for Regional competitions, should jolt the “Skipper” into face saving action.
