Col­in Croft

Chris Gayle has noth­ing to apol­o­gise for as re­gards to West In­dies crick­et. He sim­ply makes a liv­ing, rep­re­sent­ing well. If crit­i­cis­ing and com­par­ing em­ploy­ers, su­per­vi­sors or man­agers were crimes, we would be self-in­car­cer­at­ed for­ev­er. No one would be out here. All with­out ex­cep­tion, have done that!One of the best as­pects of pro­fes­sion­al­ism is that "boss­es" should be re­viewed, even by "un­der­lings."As air­line pi­lots, cap­tains and first of­fi­cers cri­tique each oth­ers' per­for­mances, good or bad, af­ter every sin­gle flight so that bad as­pects could be re­moved and not re­peat­ed. Many lives, in­clud­ing theirs, could be in jeop­ardy if mis­takes are con­tin­u­al­ly made. There are gen­er­al­ly no egos in­volved here.When I start­ed work­ing as en­gi­neer­ing as­sis­tant at Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies/Pratt & Whit­ney, one of the world's largest aero­plane en­gine mak­ers (1989), one thing drummed in­to us was that we must have no fear of re­view­ing and re­veal­ing di­rec­tives, even com­ing from lofty gen­er­al man­agers or for that mat­ter, jan­i­tors, which could be dan­ger­ous and detri­men­tal, in­di­vid­u­al­ly or col­lec­tive­ly. That saved lives!

CRM is Cus­tomer Re­source Man­age­ment aka Cock­pit Re­source Man­age­ment. One's gen­er­al man­ag­er, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer or chief pi­lot is al­so a cus­tomer since they do need ser­vices from you. Most peo­ple in­volved in run­ning West In­dies crick­et should be re-ed­u­cat­ed. They need to learn much.This Gayle sit­u­a­tion is not about apolo­gies. This is more about ex­treme­ly, but lit­tle, vin­dic­tive minds-"small is­land men­tal­i­ties"-be­ing put in­to im­por­tant places and po­si­tions, not know­ing what to do now that they are ac­tu­al­ly there but ex­pect­ing every­one to cow-tow to them.As is said in Guyana, "Tak­ing crabs out of the mud does not take the mud out of the crabs!" How true!My son, Lee, heard from one of his pro­fes­sors on his ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion grad­u­a­tion; "Hav­ing many won­der­ful qual­i­fi­ca­tions on­ly makes one qual­i­fied, not smart, not even ed­u­cat­ed. That on­ly sug­gests that you can study and re­gur­gi­tate well. Hav­ing com­mon sense does not come from books!" True too!

Any­way, even though Ja­maica man­aged to scrape in­to yes­ter­day's fi­nal of West In­dies Crick­et Board's (WICB) Re­gion­al Su­per-50 Tour­na­ment against T&T, Gayle had apolo­gies due, for sit­u­a­tions he helped de­vel­op in that semi­fi­nal against the tru­ly-gift­ed play­ers of Sagi­cor High Per­for­mance Cen­tre (HPC).How could a mas­ter bats­man with 91 Tests, 228 ODIs, 20 T20I's, over a decade of ex­pe­ri­ences, 15,000+ in­ter­na­tion­al runs, 15,000+ ad­di­tion­al runs too, sub­ject Ja­maica and his sup­port­ers every­where to that almighty swipe and dis­missal against HPC, when his team need­ed less than one run per ball on their quest to win that semi­fi­nal. "Rahtid boy, Sir Hen­ry, you are much, much bet­ter than that!"So, for the headache, heartache and stress­es that he caused many in that match and the self-dis­re­spect, maybe over-con­fi­dence, shown for his true but un­ortho­dox bat­ting abil­i­ty, he should apol­o­gise.Last week, the world's sev­en bil­lionth per­son was born. Christo­pher Hen­ry Gayle, by com­put­er imag­ing and reck­on­ing, is very of­fi­cial­ly the 4,392,236,865th per­son in our world, the 78,947,093,321st per­son to have been born since his­to­ry be­gan. These num­bers go well with his achieve­ments, do you not think?

Al­so last week, I heard an in­ter­view that made me cringe with dis­be­lief. On Sports-Max, the tele­vi­sion sta­tion based in Ja­maica, Clive Lloyd, the revered for­mer West In­dies cap­tain, sug­gest­ed that "Chris Gayle should apol­o­gise to WICB!" As Gayle him­self asks; "Apol­o­gise for what?"The fol­low­ing words have been in­deli­bly inked in­to my crick­et psy­che un­til the day I die: "We are not beat­ing the rest of the world be­cause of West In­dies Crick­et Board, but de­spite WICB!" They were said to us and to any­one who asked about West In­dies crick­et back then, by none oth­er than Lloyd!Did he have to apol­o­gise for that? Should he have? Not to my mind. What he said was ex­act­ly fact!Those words re­bound­ed to that all-con­quer­ing WI crick­et team from Lloyd, Deryck Mur­ray and Viv Richards too."For­get the Board," Viv would al­so say, fill­ing the dress­ing rooms, "We are here to play and win. Let's do those!" We al­most al­ways did.When I start­ed Cen­tral High School in 1966, I re­mem­ber hear­ing my grand­fa­ther, a Wapis­hana In­di­an, who had sur­vived the re­al, tough Guyana bush, liv­ing to 92 years old, al­so say­ing some­thing that I would nev­er for­get as long as I live; "Peo­ple do not change. They adapt to what is go­ing on around them like chameleons!" If this is not the case here, then I must be crazy!

West In­di­ans have very short mem­o­ries. There is even the sug­ges­tion in T&T that we all have a "ca­lyp­so men­tal­i­ty." We eat, drink, are mer­ry and par­ty hearty. Those are all that re­al­ly mat­ter.Like most every­where, I too have great re­spect for Lloyd. Like most play­ers of that time, he al­so aid­ed me much, in­clud­ing help­ing me play crick­et for Lan­cashire Coun­ty Crick­et Club thus en­hanc­ing my crick­et­ing ed­u­ca­tion, both cra­nial­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. How­ev­er, he is just plain­ly wrong here!It was Lloyd, who cap­tained most of that same world-beat­ing team, ex­cept on­ly Alvin Kallichar­ran and Lar­ry Gomes when we de­fect­ed to Ker­ry Pack­er's World Se­ries Crick­et (WSC). WSC of­fered us much more mon­ey than WICB could have. For more than a year, ear­ly 1978 to ear­ly 1979, we were all banned too!Note should be made that, that all-con­quer­ing West In­dies team (1970's/1980's) on­ly came back to­geth­er as a unit in 1979, suc­cess­ful­ly too, to de­fend ICC World Cup Cham­pi­onship won in 1975.I nev­er heard that Lloyd had apol­o­gised for that ei­ther. Like now, no apol­o­gy was nec­es­sary back then. Like Gayle now, all that Lloyd and the rest of us were do­ing back then was first­ly say­ing to WICB that we were not get­ting the work­ing con­di­tions, re­mu­ner­a­tions and re­spect that we al­so de­served.

We were al­so ply­ing our trade to the bid­der as Gayle does now, whom we thought gave us those.If there is some­thing wrong with any­one mak­ing de­ci­sions based on their per­cep­tion of dam­ag­ing and dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions abound­ing in their lives or pro­fes­sion­al ca­reers then all of us must be crazy!But, of course, Lloyd is now in West In­dies and ICC Crick­et Com­mit­tees. "Peo­ple do not change...etc!"Al­so, ex­cept for West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA), meek­ly, bare­ly, ask­ing, I have not re­al­ly heard any­one else stat­ing that Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, an­oth­er of WICB, should apol­o­gise to Gayle for adroit­ly com­par­ing Gayle to that oth­er "Chris", his Ja­maican coun­try-man, Christo­pher "Dudus" Coke!With the tech­nol­o­gy avail­able, every­one has orig­i­nals of that speech. Oh, I ex­pect per­son­al re­but­tals from this; killing the mes­sen­ger not heed­ing the mes­sage but this Gayle sce­nario reeks of hypocrisy! Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics, Ja­maicans live an av­er­age 72.2 years. That means that Gayle, at 32.2 years old now, has at least 40 more years to live. I say this to him now. Play as much crick­et as you can, any­where you can and make as much mon­ey you can for your fam­i­ly. Do what you need to do!Pop­u­lar­i­ty, loy­al­ty and fame do not feed, clothe or house your fam­i­ly. On­ly mon­ey does!