West Indies' Chris Gayle is currently an international outcast. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA
This being the world cricket forum, it tends to confirm what we already thought we knew: that true cricket followers constitute a global community where, whatever the strength of the discussion and parochial nature of support, there lies at the heart of it all an interest in the welfare of cricket across the world. I can only speak personally but this correspondent is better informed for the input.
The other night, on television in England, the film Fire in Babylon was shown which, despite flaws (while understanding reasons for not doing so, I think it would have been enhanced by the views of some on the receiving end and, as with a similar recent documentary From The Ashes, there is too much effort to place things in a social and political context to a degree that may not have been there) reminded us of what West Indies cricket achieved and what we are now missing.
We all know the reasons offered for the decline and fall of a once-great team: the influence of American sport on satellite TV when cricket was not broadcast in the region; a return to the natural insularity of the Caribbean; the spread of football. These are all pertinent in themselves but camouflage the complacency, incompetence and mismanagement of the West Indies Cricket Board, deluding themselves that the production line would simply continue to churn out great players. By the time the realisation came that it wasn't, a generation had been lost and it was too late.
Not that running cricket in the Caribbean is a sinecure. Imagine putting together a European football team, and multiply the task to include not just different nationalities, but religions and ethnicities too, and the broad picture emerges. That West Indies cricket sustained itself at all was down to a collective desire to represent a region and show it had real strength.
Things have moved on now, but the infighting, always there, has reached epidemic proportions. In Guyana (not strictly Caribbean of course, but under the banner), the government disenfranchised the Guyana Cricket Board, citing corruption and financial mismanagement, and installed its own body, headed by Clive Lloyd (who resigned from WICB as a result) which, because the ICC constitution forbids political interference in cricket governance, prompted WICB to withdraw all international matches from the country. Australia will go to Dominica instead.
Two days ago the home of the GCB president was raided, and documents seized: Ramsay Ali has resigned. Then there has been the continual stand-off between Chris Gayle, the Jamaican who is the one current West Indies superstar, which means, as Barney Ronay pointed out on these pages recently, he is reduced (if not financially) to roaming the world hitting sixes. The rights and wrongs of this are never clear from a distance but it is astounding that heads have not been clunked together. To this end, we on the forum are always well briefed by our regular correspondent Bumboclart whose knowledge suggests the closest of associations with things: I look forward to hearing the latest.
Now the government of Jamaica, through its prime minister Portia Simpson-Miller, has become embroiled in the Gayle argument and the decision not to allocate Australia a Test match at Sabina Park with the suggestion, sabre-rattling given the financial input necessary but there nonetheless, that the country could actually go it alone as a cricketing entity. She is demanding an apology from WICB for issuing a " rude" statement in response: none will be forthcoming. WICB are demanding an apology from Chris Gayle: none will be forthcoming from that quarter either, not least because he appears unclear of what to apologise for.
A motion proposed by the Jamaica Cricket Association to reinstate Gayle has been rejected. And the president of WICB for the last five years, Dr Julian Hunte, continues in his position as does the chief executive Ernest Hilaire. This is Caribbean cricket's Gordian knot. Perhaps Bumboclart and others can help unravel it.
Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/mar/01/guardian-world-cricket-forumThe other night, on television in England, the film Fire in Babylon was shown which, despite flaws (while understanding reasons for not doing so, I think it would have been enhanced by the views of some on the receiving end and, as with a similar recent documentary From The Ashes, there is too much effort to place things in a social and political context to a degree that may not have been there) reminded us of what West Indies cricket achieved and what we are now missing.
We all know the reasons offered for the decline and fall of a once-great team: the influence of American sport on satellite TV when cricket was not broadcast in the region; a return to the natural insularity of the Caribbean; the spread of football. These are all pertinent in themselves but camouflage the complacency, incompetence and mismanagement of the West Indies Cricket Board, deluding themselves that the production line would simply continue to churn out great players. By the time the realisation came that it wasn't, a generation had been lost and it was too late.
Not that running cricket in the Caribbean is a sinecure. Imagine putting together a European football team, and multiply the task to include not just different nationalities, but religions and ethnicities too, and the broad picture emerges. That West Indies cricket sustained itself at all was down to a collective desire to represent a region and show it had real strength.
Things have moved on now, but the infighting, always there, has reached epidemic proportions. In Guyana (not strictly Caribbean of course, but under the banner), the government disenfranchised the Guyana Cricket Board, citing corruption and financial mismanagement, and installed its own body, headed by Clive Lloyd (who resigned from WICB as a result) which, because the ICC constitution forbids political interference in cricket governance, prompted WICB to withdraw all international matches from the country. Australia will go to Dominica instead.
Two days ago the home of the GCB president was raided, and documents seized: Ramsay Ali has resigned. Then there has been the continual stand-off between Chris Gayle, the Jamaican who is the one current West Indies superstar, which means, as Barney Ronay pointed out on these pages recently, he is reduced (if not financially) to roaming the world hitting sixes. The rights and wrongs of this are never clear from a distance but it is astounding that heads have not been clunked together. To this end, we on the forum are always well briefed by our regular correspondent Bumboclart whose knowledge suggests the closest of associations with things: I look forward to hearing the latest.
Now the government of Jamaica, through its prime minister Portia Simpson-Miller, has become embroiled in the Gayle argument and the decision not to allocate Australia a Test match at Sabina Park with the suggestion, sabre-rattling given the financial input necessary but there nonetheless, that the country could actually go it alone as a cricketing entity. She is demanding an apology from WICB for issuing a " rude" statement in response: none will be forthcoming. WICB are demanding an apology from Chris Gayle: none will be forthcoming from that quarter either, not least because he appears unclear of what to apologise for.
A motion proposed by the Jamaica Cricket Association to reinstate Gayle has been rejected. And the president of WICB for the last five years, Dr Julian Hunte, continues in his position as does the chief executive Ernest Hilaire. This is Caribbean cricket's Gordian knot. Perhaps Bumboclart and others can help unravel it.
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