Alvin Corneal

It was dif­fi­cult to find any oth­er word which would have bet­ter de­scribed the peo­ple who hold the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for or­gan­is­ing Crick­et in every coun­try in the world. Of course, I re­fer to the ICC, a group of in­di­vid­u­als whose rep­u­ta­tions as nor­mal re­spectable cit­i­zens of their own coun­try are well es­tab­lished, but seem un­able to utilise their ex­pe­ri­ences to guide the des­tiny of Crick­et to­wards the right di­rec­tion in which the game should go. In the past few years, there was al­ways some­thing for which one could chal­lenge the de­ci­sions tak­en by this Board and be­cause of the fact that they were com­ing from an as­tute group, few wished to open­ly crit­i­cise, most­ly be­cause they placed great con­fi­dence in these ex­perts. But it has be­come very dif­fi­cult to ac­cept a num­ber of their re­cent hap­pen­ings, es­pe­cial­ly when they ap­pear to have ac­tu­al­ly giv­en way to the im­me­di­ate im­pact of T20 crick­et to the point that they have giv­en per­mis­sion to a num­ber of IPL, BPL, and what­ev­er "PLS" fran­chis­es to con­duct their tour­na­ments with­out even try­ing to leave space for the con­ven­tion­al type of Crick­et at the In­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. These ad-hoc de­ci­sions have thrown the reg­u­lar pat­tern of or­gan­is­ing Test and ODI se­ries in­to chaos, where the huge fi­nances which have en­tered the lives of the star play­ers in each coun­try, have changed the fo­cus of the said play­ers, mak­ing them en­ter­tain­ment mil­lion­aires to re­place mod­er­ate­ly com­pen­sat­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­eters.

They may or may not have re­alised that on­ly the larg­er coun­tries with their huge pop­u­la­tions can make the type of se­lec­tion ad­just­ment which may not af­fect the qual­i­ty of their test per­for­mances. The Caribbean has been hit the hard­est from all an­gles, first­ly by turn­ing these play­ers in­to mak­ing de­ci­sions which would ei­ther af­fect the coun­try or the play­ers' bank ac­counts. Now that the game has be­come the sec­ondary fac­tor, it can be com­fort­ably said that the re­gion­al Caribbean se­ries has lost its qual­i­ty val­ue fol­low­ing the ab­sence of all the top play­ers. We are al­so about to recog­nise that the slip­shod method used for sched­ul­ing test crick­et has be­gun the de­struc­tive process by hav­ing re­gion­al crick­et and test crick­et played at the same time. Could any­one un­der­stand the non­sense val­ue of or­gan­is­ing train­ing camps for the prospec­tive WI play­ers dur­ing the same days that the ma­jor coun­tries are fight­ing for Caribbean su­prema­cy? In some cas­es, the is­sue is more crit­i­cal, as Sunil Nar­ine's predica­ment, as to whether he choos­es the love for coun­try be­fore four mil­lion dol­lars. If the nine se­lect­ed play­ers from T&T ac­cept their in­vi­ta­tions to at­tend the WI train­ing camp in Bar­ba­dos over the next two week­ends, what sort of team will this coun­try place on the field against Ja­maica, who may al­so be short of some stars? Can we tru­ly claim that the win­ner of this tour­na­ment is the strongest team in the re­gion? This line of think­ing is un­re­al­is­tic and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive when it re­lates to the de­vel­op­ment of West In­dies crick­et as a whole.

Why would Otis Gib­son and his tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee wish to have a train­ing camp on the same week­end of key re­gion­al match­es? Would the con­cept of ac­tu­al stern com­pe­ti­tion be more re­al­is­tic to the play­ers in their quest for prepa­ra­tion against the Aussies a few weeks lat­er? And if the WICB do not see the lack of wis­dom in their de­ci­sion, why have the Ja­maicans and Trinidad and To­bag­o­ni­ans not tak­en is­sue with such a hor­ri­ble lack of for­syth­ia. Ac­cept­ing to play the game is tan­ta­mount to de­stroy­ing the fab­ric of our Crick­et and wa­ter­ing down the val­ue of play­ers wear­ing a na­tion­al cap. Even with some of the stars in the game against Wind­ward Is­lands, the crowds were very poor. What should the TTCB ex­pect for crowd sup­port if the team is void of all the stars, when we face Ja­maica at the Oval? Are we so blind to recog­nise the to­tal lack of com­pe­tence of the WICB, in mat­ters which will sure­ly re­duce the qual­i­ty and love for Crick­et in­to lit­er­al noth­ing­ness? Maybe that is the rea­son why our do­mes­tic sea­son runs con­cur­rent­ly with our re­gion­al match­es as well. Will the pow­ers that be re­turn to their sens­es and make the nec­es­sary cor­rec­tions to this un­re­al­is­tic sched­ul­ing, which will clear­ly pro­duce neg­a­tive re­sults from our teams?