An­dre Bap­tiste

We are all dream­ers. Many of us wish for spe­cial days while oth­ers dream of find­ing peace and so­lace with an ap­pro­pri­ate com­pan­ion. How­ev­er, life is not about dreams, wish­es, best thoughts or de­sires, life is about re­al­i­ty and at times the hurt­ful truth is that more of­ten than not, that re­al­i­ty is es­sen­tial­ly far dif­fer­ent from your wish­es or de­sires. So dream­ing of hap­pi­ness, it seems, can be an il­lu­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sports and in­deed crick­et. Yes, crick­et is back in the news again for all the wrong rea­sons. The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), through its se­lec­tors (Clyde Butts, Robert Haynes and Court­ney Browne) has found a way again to name Dar­ren Sam­my as West In­dies cap­tain with­out a good and jus­ti­fi­able rea­son. It can't be be­cause he is equipped to do the job and one can on­ly con­clude that the rea­sons for his ap­point­ment are: (1) he is well liked by the WICB ad­min­is­tra­tion: (2) coach Otis Gib­son wants him and (3) he was born in St Lu­cia (home of WICB pres­i­dent Ju­lian Hunte and WICB chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Dr Ernest Hi­laire).

There was a thought that af­ter the St Lu­cia elec­tions, Hi­laire and Hunte would have re­signed be­cause of their po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions. How­ev­er this has not hap­pened and their re­turn has sad­ly en­sured that Sam­my is re­tained for the first three ODI match­es. In the mean­time, the WICB con­tin­ues to alien­ate fans in the re­gion who have lost faith in the prod­uct-West In­dies crick­et. Spon­sors are not jump­ing over each oth­er to be in­volved in West In­dies crick­et, de­spite the glam­our of the Re­gion­al T20 cham­pi­onships. Peo­ple sim­ply do not trust the WICB. Whether it's Guyana, Ja­maica or T&T, ques­tions linger. I have in­ten­tion­al­ly not in­clud­ed Bar­ba­dos since they seem to be favoured. There are Bar­ba­di­ans coach­es, man­agers, se­lec­tors, phys­ios, an­a­lysts, me­dia, ad­min­is­tra­tive staff. Every area of em­ploy­ment with­in the Board seems to be the do­main of a Ba­jan. Take your pick. Desmond Haynes, Gib­son, Springer, Camp­bell, Howard, Wilkin­son, Richards, Spoon­er, Beck­les and the list goes on and on.

And be­fore long, I ex­pect every sin­gle play­er from the Wind­wards to have played on one of the three West In­dies team-wait and see! Dem boys must eat ah food. Not so! Sad­ly with Aus­tralia in such form, the WICB is set­ting us up for the maul­ing of our life. The se­lec­tors have added to this ad­van­tage in se­lect­ing Sam­my to lead the team. Sam­my's abil­i­ty has been dis­cussed too of­ten and while it ap­pears ob­vi­ous to any sen­si­ble busi­ness­man, any knowl­edge­able doc­tor, any in­tel­lec­tu­al ac­coun­tant, any bril­liant school­teacher, any pa­tri­ot­ic garbage col­lec­tor or any­one who cares about the fu­ture of West In­dies crick­et, it is clear­ly in­con­ceiv­able to the se­lec­tors and their co­horts on the WICB. This in­tran­si­gence is per­haps a symp­tom of a greater epi­dem­ic in West In­dies crick­et that seems to per­me­ate every stra­ta of the sport at the ad­min­is­tra­tive lev­el in near­ly all of the var­i­ous di­vid­ed-sor­ry-uni­fied ter­ri­to­r­i­al crick­et boards in the re­gion.

It is a one-up­man­ship be­hav­ior that sends the mes­sage, "we know what we are do­ing, so please do not ask any ques­tions, just ac­cept it." This think­ing is as out­dat­ed and re­mote as the pre­mo­ni­tion that Sam­my would one day jus­ti­fy his se­lec­tion. Let us ex­am­ine the com­po­si­tion of the team se­lect­ed for these first set of match­es and as­cer­tain if there is room for Sam­my. At the all-rounder lev­el, Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard are two very valu­able prod­ucts in world crick­et, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the T20 ver­sion and there­fore their prowess in the 50 over ver­sion places them way ahead of Sam­my. Then there is An­dre Rus­sell, a young and po­ten­tial­ly ex­plo­sive play­er who can­not be eas­i­ly thrown aside. These are po­tent points which any re­spectable se­lec­tion com­mit­tee should be able to de­fend-ex­cept of course, we don't have se­lec­tors who can stand up to scruti­ny. If by the end of Ju­ly, the cur­rent band were to lose their po­si­tion be­cause they failed to fol­low or­ders and se­lect cer­tain play­ers, the pub­lic will be the judge. Jus­tice is about fair play and hon­esty and in the eyes of 80 per cent of the re­gion, Sam­my is out of his depth and out of weight class as a play­er on most if not all West In­dies teams.

As it stands, the Aus­tralians are dif­fi­cult enough as op­po­nents, with or with­out cap­tain Michael Clarke and to pur­pose­ful­ly re­duce your own chances of suc­cess by choos­ing Sam­my is enough to dri­ve the most ar­dent West In­di­an sup­port­er mad. The truth is, we must not be an­noyed by those who be­lieve enough has been spo­ken/writ­ten about Sam­my's fail­ings. If we do not high­light this, we are not on­ly go­ing to dis­ap­point our gen­er­a­tion of sup­port­ers, but al­so our chil­dren's gen­er­a­tion. And there can no longer be the ridicu­lous state­ment that we do not have any­body else. This is a fal­la­cy. De­nesh Ramdin has not on­ly risen to the oc­ca­sion as the new leader with vic­to­ry in the re­gion­al T20 cham­pi­onships, but he has been one of the most con­sis­tent bats­men with a cen­tu­ry to his name in the re­gion­al four day tour­na­ment. Ramdin is with­out doubt, the best choice to lead the West In­dies at the mo­ment. Un­like Sam­my, he has the re­spect of the se­nior play­ers and de­serves his place on the team. This is im­por­tant for the con­fi­dence of the play­ers.

Of course, Sam­my's el­e­va­tion is no fault of his. Amaz­ing­ly though, he al­lows him­self to be used, some would even say abused by the ad­min­is­tra­tion. He must know that his crick­et­ing stock is low and get­ting low­er by the minute. It must be dif­fi­cult for Sam­my to face this team­mates and watch them in their face and bark or­ders or give ad­vice, know­ing that he should not be there. If one can draw ref­er­ence to the to­tal­ly mes­meris­ing de­ci­sion by the WICB to force sev­er­al lead­ing play­ers to at­tend a camp ahead of the Aus­tralian tour, rather than to play com­pet­i­tive­ly for their re­spec­tive coun­tries, then, there must be no sur­prise in be­liev­ing that the Board is try­ing hard to en­sure the West In­dies lose against Aus­tralia. This camp which de­prived T&T of sev­er­al of its top play­ers for the all im­por­tant clash against Ja­maica, made ab­solute­ly no sense.

It would have been bet­ter if the WICB ad­mit­ted to mak­ing a mis­take with the dates. Which would serve more pur­pose a com­pet­i­tive match or a camp with Gib­son and com­pa­ny talk­ing? I leave that to your own in­ter­pre­ta­tion. I am cer­tain that Sam­my's un­for­tu­nate re­ten­tion has left many fans hop­ing the West In­dies los­es all three of their ODIs, since I can­not see Butts, Browne and Haynes con­tin­u­ing with Sam­my af­ter­wards. So we are start­ing with fans want­i­ng the team to lose so Sam­my could be axed. It re­al­ly is sad when this is the vibes from your own. I re­spect­ful­ly sub­mit that crick­et is larg­er than one per­son or one Board. I hope the WICB can re­alise this and come to their sens­es soon­er rather than lat­er, oth­er­wise the one force that unites the Caribbean peo­ple may well be in dan­ger. And that would be most un­for­tu­nate!