One of the not-too-re­flect­ed-up­on el­e­ments of West In­dies crick­et his­to­ry is the sig­nif­i­cance of out­stand­ing gen­er­als who have mar­shalled the teams in­to great fight­ing units that be­came world cham­pi­ons dur­ing pe­ri­ods of our dom­i­nance.

Of counter sig­nif­i­cance has been the ab­sence of the in­volve­ment of the WI Crick­et Board, called by what­ev­er name you choose to re­fer to it as, be­ing cen­tral to con­vert­ing teams with a few play­ers of dy­nam­ic abil­i­ty in­to a lib­er­at­ed, high­ly tal­ent­ed, and world-con­quer­ing West In­di­an crick­et team. In re­al­i­ty, West In­di­an crick­et boards have of­ten been a dis­rup­tive el­e­ment to ad­vance our crick­et; we shall come to that.

Dur­ing the first com­ing of a great West In­di­an crick­et­ing na­tion in 1950, the 3Ws and two 20 to 21-year-olds, Son­ny Ra­mad­hin and Al­fred “Alf” Valen­tine, dis­played the abil­i­ty, dy­namism, and con­fi­dence to de­feat the colo­nial mas­ters at their game and on their turf.

Learie Con­stan­tine, who re­mains lodged in his­to­ry as one of the most en­er­getic dy­namos of crick­et and who be­came a cham­pi­on of hu­man rights and a most dis­tin­guished in­di­vid­ual (Lord Con­stan­tine) in race re­la­tions in Britain, said to the ef­fect that if the first great West In­di­an bats­man, George Headley, and he were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to man­age/coach the team to Aus­tralia in 1951-52, the West In­dies would have fol­lowed the his­toric tri­umph of Eng­land with an­oth­er Down Un­der.

Few­er than ten years lat­er, Frank Wor­rell dis­tin­guished him­self and in­tro­duced an in­ci­sive West In­di­an gen­er­al­ship, all but beat­ing the Aus­tralians at home but for high­ly ques­tion­able um­pir­ing.

That tour sig­nalled the emer­gence of the first tru­ly great West In­di­an crick­et team. As cap­tain and then man­ag­er, Wor­rell laid down the foun­da­tion for West In­di­an crick­et great­ness, which fol­lowed there­after.

Sobers bloomed as the “great­est crick­eter on earth or Mars”, Kan­hai, Hall, Hunte, Mur­ray, and Gibbs be­came the great­est play­ers in bat­ting, bowl­ing, and field­ing.

Af­ter near­ly a decade of tri­umph of West In­dies de­feat­ing Eng­land and Aus­tralia, a hia­tus set in un­til Clive Lloyd re­con­struct­ed West In­di­an in­no­v­a­tive­ness and in­vin­ci­bil­i­ty on the crick­et field. How­ev­er, it took a com­plete thrash­ing by the Aus­tralians in 1975 to in­sti­gate a most cre­ative and ul­ti­mate­ly dev­as­tat­ing in­ser­tion by Lloyd’s team, the one he built from the de­struc­tion of Ian Chap­pell’s rugged, as­sertive, take-no-pris­on­ers at­ti­tude.

What Lloyd left be­hind (when his team soft­ened its ap­proach to In­dia in the ODI fi­nal at Lord’s) was, first of all, an ul­tra-ag­gres­sive cap­tain who just hap­pened to be the great­est bats­man in the world at that point, and for a few years, along with a re­lent­less bat­ting and bowl­ing ar­ma­da, he and the team he in­her­it­ed took no pris­on­ers.

Through­out all of the above his­to­ry, the West In­di­an Crick­et Board/s was of no pro­gres­sive im­por­tance. If any­thing, the colo­nial-type boards tend­ed to be just that: colo­nial and re­gres­sive in na­ture and ac­tions.

The board of the late 1950s had to be forced to ap­point Wor­rell, the first Black man to be made the sub­stan­tive cap­tain. Wor­rell’s se­lec­tion had to be in­sti­gat­ed from out­side the board by C L R James in the PNM’s news­pa­per, the Na­tion; he waged a tire­less cam­paign to break down the colo­nial de­ci­sion-mak­ing of the board.

Lloyd was made cap­tain af­ter Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Forbes Burn­ham brought him back to the West In­dies from play­ing state crick­et in Aus­tralia. When Lloyd and a num­ber of play­ers of his team joined the World Se­ries Crick­et of Ker­ry Pack­er, then pres­i­dent of the WICB, Jef­frey Stollmey­er re­fused to coun­te­nance the com­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

An­oth­er board pres­i­dent, Pat Rousseau, cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion where a West In­di­an team to South Africa made a stand at the Lon­don air­port over fees. It re­curred on an­oth­er oc­ca­sion when a West In­di­an team in In­dia, led by Dwayne Bra­vo, re­turned home when promised salaries were not paid.

The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion of the pres­i­dent of the CWI has tak­en every pos­si­ble ac­tion to dis­in­te­grate a West In­di­an team. In­stead of tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, he seeks to hide his shame by at­tempt­ing to in­sti­gate a re­turn to the his­tor­i­cal in­su­lar­i­ty, is­land na­tion against is­land na­tion, a sor­did, com­plete­ly em­bar­rass­ing episode.

There is more, but hope­ful­ly the point has been made: West In­di­an crick­et great­ness has been cre­at­ed and in­spired by dis­tin­guished play­ers; suc­ceed­ing boards have done lit­tle to ap­pre­ci­ate and un­der­stand how these great in­di­vid­u­als and teams have emerged, and in­stead of seek­ing to re­search the sources of great­ness to recre­ate the mod­el, they have gen­er­at­ed in­ter­nal con­flict and in­duced or­di­nar­i­ness and a ma­jor de­cline in West In­dies crick­et.

The boards have not ap­pre­ci­at­ed the im­por­tance of West In­dies crick­et to the re­gion, and with­out such an un­der­stand­ing, they have failed to find the nec­es­sary ini­tia­tive to in­sti­gate dy­nam­ic change.

The ma­m­aguy of hav­ing Clive Lloyd, Vi­vian Richards, and Bri­an Lara, al­though not per­ceived in the con­text of what is stat­ed above, can be of some val­ue if their in­puts are tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. For that to hap­pen, CWI has to stand aside and give free rein to the out­stand­ing in­di­vid­u­als to be­gin the re­mak­ing of West In­dies crick­et. We shall see.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er—free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and the St Au­gus­tine In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.