Maybe Trinidad and Tobago's national cricket captain, Daren Ganga, should be given the opportunity to fully explain his comments to the Cricinfo Web site so we know where he stands on this business of this country breaking out of the West Indies cricket fraternity and "going it alone." As the interviewer pursued the subject of T&T going it alone, Mr Ganga seemed to warm to the idea as the interviewer asked him to put aside "the legacy and emotion" of WI cricket and look forward to perhaps the creation of a T&T national team in the international arena.
"I think there is an opportunity to head in that direction. The ICC allows a country to apply and go through the process of getting in that member set-up. Whether anyone has the confidence and bravery to go in that direction and to run the risk of breaking that legacy is to be seen. But we all know that it is possible in today's world," said Mr Ganga. But even here in this the closest he got in his comments to being definitive about his position, he seemed to wobble a bit, suggesting that he would not be the one to "call the shot" but that it depended on the braveness of others.
Also in the interview, the T&T captain seemed to base his position of the country possibly going it alone on its performance in the present Twenty20 tour- nament in India. Well, so far, the Ganga team has fallen to the same lack of confidence in its ability to win, to deliver the game when it had it in its grip in the same manner that the West Indies has failed to do over the last 15 years. Cynically, therefore, and with a little bit of tongue-in-cheek, maybe we should leave the matter alone as it no longer arises as T&T has failed the test of going it alone. It is not the first time this matter has arisen in recent times. Further, this nationalist ambition has arisen in the past in Jamaica and with Barbados when the latter was at the height of its powers in the 1960s with half the WI team coming from Bim-shire, inclusive of the incomparable Gary Sobers.
Breaking up the 80-year-old and proud legacy of WI cricket is not something this newspaper will advocate. In fact, there is every reason for similar forms of representing ourselves to the rest of the world in sports, economic and political matters. David Michael Rudder, in what has become the anthem of WI cricket, has rued the thought of separation "in a world that don't need islands no more," meaning how could we even conceive of such a thought when as individual islands we have little chance of survival in a world of super states and regional and hemispheric trading blocs of such size and power that would obliterate tiny nation-states. There is much wisdom in what the bard sings.
However, the world and the cricket world are evolving in ways previously thought to be inconceivable. The obviously truncated and commercial forms of the game are attracting massive crowds all over the cricketing world. Roaming bands of professional cricketers are moving their game from continent to continent to advance their market prospects, completely without reference to loyalties to their national state. Dwayne Bravo and Keiron Pollard, two of the most dynamic and dangerous all-rounders in world cricket today, have demonstrated to everyone their preference to play for the fat pay cheques as opposed to playing for T&T. On Mr Ganga's return we should hear him out and then engage in a healthy discussion on the issues.