Vin­ode Mam­chan

Let me be frank right off the bat. I don't think Chris Gayle will ever re­turn to the West In­dies crick­et team un­der the present set-up. Yes, I am risk­ing los­ing the one or two read­ers I have with the pre­vi­ous com­ment. I have not­ed with tremen­dous in­ter­est the re­cent hap­pen­ings con­cern­ing the Gayle saga with the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) and I am not at all con­fi­dent that the big left han­der will be around to set cold Eng­land on fire next month.

Af­ter all was said and done we all thought that the way was paved for a re­turn. First­ly, look­ing back at the en­tire sit­u­a­tion, Gayle was left out of the set-up be­cause of com­ments he made on ra­dio in Ja­maica. His com­ments in­fu­ri­at­ed the WICB, CEO Dr Ernest Hilliare and the pres­i­dent of the WICB called on him to re­tract the state­ments he made. Gayle then asked ex­act­ly what he had to re­tract and af­ter no word from the WICB, Cari­com got in­volved be­cause Gayle was light­ing up the T20 leagues around the world and the re­gion­al fans want­ed part of that.

Af­ter a lot of dis­cus­sions it was de­cid­ed by both Gayle and the WICB, that the com­ments were re­gret­table and the way was paved for a re­turn. Ob­sta­cle one was out of the way. Then lo and be­hold ob­sta­cle two came around. Gayle was told that he needs to make him­self avail­able for se­lec­tion, in or­der to be in the fray for the Eng­land se­ries. The Roy­al Chal­lengers Ban­ga­lore play­er was due to miss the Test as­pect of the se­ries be­cause of his com­mit­ments at the IPL in In­dia. He would have missed the en­tire Eng­land tour be­cause of an­oth­er T20 con­tract, this time with Eng­lish Coun­ty Som­er­set. He then de­cid­ed to give up the TT$1.5M con­tract with Som­er­set and make him­self avail­able for the West In­dies lim­it­ed overs part of the tour. Play­ing for the West In­dies in the lim­it­ed overs se­ries would have fetched him TT$60,000. Such was his com­mit­ment to re­turn to ma­roon, Gayle was will­ing to forego over $TT1.4M to face Eng­land at the top of the West In­dies bat­ting or­der. Gayle then met with the West In­dies se­lec­tors and left af­ter the meet­ing full of con­fi­dence that he will make his re­turn.

He sent an e-mail to WICB pres­i­dent Dr Hunte which stat­ed: "Fur­ther­more, I am even more de­light­ed to re­port that my meet­ing with the se­lec­tors went well, with Mr Butts on be­half of the oth­er se­lec­tors present at the meet­ing in­di­cat­ing that, and I quote from the con­firmed min­utes of the said meet­ing, "that once he (Gayle) was avail­able he would be con­sid­ered for se­lec­tion once the board gave the nec­es­sary clear­ance. "Hav­ing read your e-mail, which states that the "Board has nev­er and will not now start in­ter­fer­ing with the de­ci­sion of the Se­lec­tors" I am pleased that the Board has con­firmed that the re­quired clear­ance has been giv­en. I trust that you will in­form the se­lec­tors ac­cord­ing­ly. As you would ap­pre­ci­ate, I am ex­treme­ly ex­cit­ed to once more wear the ma­roon and sat­is­fy the West In­di­an fans by con­tribut­ing to West In­dies crick­et so that we once again aim to reach the pin­na­cle of world crick­et."

Gayle was then over ob­sta­cle two, or at least he thought so, un­til Hunte re­spond­ed with the fol­low­ing via e-mail: "I am not sure the ba­sis for your con­clu­sion that the is­sues have now fi­nal­ly been re­solved." All of a sud­den ob­sta­cle three comes in­to ef­fect and we will have to wait and see what tran­spires this time around. The Board is say­ing that he still needs to meet with its di­rec­tors to get full clear­ance, as there are some resid­ual mat­ters to be dealt with. Ac­cord­ing to sources close to the hur­ri­cane bats­man, he is will­ing to meet with the WICB again to dis­cuss the lat­est twist but is very hurt by the lat­est de­vel­op­ments. There has been talk in crick­et cir­cles that a num­ber of top guns are not in favour of the flam­boy­ant Gayle re­turn­ing to the fold and ob­sta­cles af­ter ob­sta­cles will be com­ing his way, un­til he is frus­trat­ed enough to pack up his ma­roon gear for the T20 cir­cus. This is very dis­turb­ing in­deed be­cause lat­er this year we have the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) T20 World Cup com­ing up in Sri Lan­ka and we stand our best chance of win­ning our first World T20 ti­tle. Gayle is ma­jor in those as­pi­ra­tions and is the best T20 bats­man in the world. We need our best play­ers avail­able for us to stand a chance of lift­ing that ti­tle and this saga needs to come to an end, for the new chap­ter in West In­dies crick­et to be­gin.

How fit­ting it would be for the young promis­ing crick­eters to taste World Cup suc­cess ear­ly in their ca­reer. That de­featist at­ti­tude that was de­vel­oped over the last decade would be out the door and the young men would ac­tu­al­ly be­lieve that they can beat peo­ple and take West In­dies crick­et back up the lad­der. On an­oth­er note, I was tru­ly amazed by the fact that the man­ag­er of the team Richie Richard­son did not know the where­abouts of mid­dle or­der bats­men Mar­lon Samuels. The Ja­maican who rep­re­sent­ed the Pune War­riors in the IPL,did not have an Eng­lish visa and had to se­cure one be­fore ar­riv­ing in Eng­land. When quizzed by re­porters of the where­abouts of Samuels, Richard­son said he did not know. Come on Richie, you are the man­ag­er of this team and you don't know where a play­er is? The man­ag­er has to be in the know con­cern­ing his play­ers, if you don't know, then who would?

I re­mem­ber when the West In­dies Un­der-19 crick­et team had to tour New Zealand for the World Cup, the then man­ag­er of the West In­dies Un­der-19 team Omar Khan made it his busi­ness to fly to Cana­da to se­cure the visas be­cause it was not avail­able in the Caribbean. The WICB had about ten days since the team for Eng­land was named to make sure all the guys had their visa but some­how, three men still did not get theirs in time. If we want to re­claim the top po­si­tion we need to be pro­fes­sion­al in all de­part­ments and throw egos out the win­dow.