Mar­tin George

?Deryck Mur­ray was known as a cau­tious and pru­dent West In­dies bats­man, and in­deed in the crick­et­ing world, cau­tion and pru­dence are hall­marks of a good, steady crick­eter. There are times, how­ev­er, when one has to step out of one's crease and re­al­ly lash out and beat the cov­er off the ball; when one has to dance down the pitch to meet the on­com­ing charge of the fiery bowler and clob­ber his de­liv­ery to the bound­ary with despatch, if not dis­dain. Mur­ray has fired the open­ing sal­vo and has en­gaged in the open­ing gam­bit of tak­ing the chal­lenge to the WICB by boy­cotting the AGM, re­cent­ly, but he is care­ful to say that this is no sig­nal that T&T wish­es to try to go it alone. This is where we must part ways with Mur­ray.

Now, this may just be his pub­lic pos­tur­ing to say that T&T does not wish to go it alone, and maybe, deep down in­side he is se­cret­ly yearn­ing and han­ker­ing for this, but the time to take off the kid gloves is now.� The time for po­lite tete-a-tete and pleas­ant tit­ter­ing is over. We need to call a spade a spade, and the ug­ly truth is that West In­dies crick­et is not go­ing any­where, and this is not go­ing to change in the near fu­ture. The WI Board, the play­ers and Wipa are all dead in the wa­ter, tied up and twist­ed in­to knots of sus­pi­cion, greed, anger, mis­trust, in­su­lar­i­ty and xeno­pho­bia. The politi­cians are un­able to help, hard­ly be­ing able to set a bet­ter ex­am­ple them­selves.

Sir Shri­dath has be­gun to all but de­spair at the slow pace of progress; Ken Gor­don has re­treat­ed in­to splen­did iso­la­tion, lick­ing his wounds from his bat­tles to try to change the sys­tem, and yet the beast and the un­wieldy be­he­moth that is West In­dies crick­et would not be tamed and would not be brought to heel. The leg­ends have spo­ken out about the present crop of crick­eters and their at­ti­tudes, and the young curs have snapped and snarled back in de­fi­ance, de­ter­mined that no one should tell them any­thing and that they must con­tin­ue to do as they please, drag­ging the tat­tered im­age of West In­dies crick­et even fur­ther through the mud. Let's face it; the truth is it ain't gonna get bet­ter soon; that is if it ever gets bet­ter at all.

If it is one thing that we in the Caribbean have proven con­sis­tent­ly over the years is our un­fail­ing in­abil­i­ty to unite for any length of time for any good cause or com­mon pur­pose. We need to wake up and smell the cof­fee. The dream is over; the good old days are gone for­ev­er, leav­ing us with noth­ing but sweet rem­i­nis­cences and pleas­ant mem­o­ries. How, then, do we chart a prop­er course for the fu­ture? Forbes Per­saud is not shy or afraid to state his feel­ings as to how we should move for­ward, and this is a point I have been ham­mer­ing in this col­umn over the years.

It is time for Trinidad and To­ba­go to seek to go it alone in the world crick­et are­na. It is not go­ing to be easy at first, and we may start off as the whip­ping boys, but we will learn; we will im­prove, and we will even­tu­al­ly get it right. We have the ad­min­is­tra­tors and the sports man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als who can mould, shape and fash­ion a world-class team.� We have Omar Khan, who has shown com­pe­tence in man­ag­ing teams. We have lots of young tal­ent in Adri­an Bharath, Lendl Sim­mons, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Richard Kel­ly, Dave "Tad­pole" Mo­hammed and so many oth­ers.

Al­so, once it is es­tab­lished that we are now on the world stage on our own, tal­ent will come crawl­ing out of the wood­work, so many young play­ers who have raw tal­ent and a burn­ing pas­sion for the game will get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to hone, har­ness and de­vel­op their skills and tal­ent and be roomed in­to con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als. Let's not pre­tend any­more. This de­ci­sion will not make us pop­u­lar, nor will it earn the adu­la­tion of our fel­low West In­di­an na­tions, but there comes a time when one has to strike out on one's own and carve one's own path, cre­ate one's own niche, and own space in the world, and that time is now.

We have the fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­sources to take on this chal­lenge. It will take some time and a whole lot of do­ing, but with the right sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment, the play­ers and the pub­lic and, with the bless­ings of the ICC, it can be done. We will, at first, be just a small fledg­ling na­tion ap­pear­ing ner­vous­ly for its de­but on the world stage, but we will grow from strength to strength and will, even­tu­al­ly, be­come world-beat­ers and will be able to pro­duce a world-class team, be­cause it is more than time enough for T&T to go it alone on the world crick­et stage.