Alvin Corneal

Did I hear nu­mer­ous lovers of crick­et com­ment ad­verse­ly about the man­ner in which the game has been ad­min­is­tered over the past few years?

Have we not "en­joyed" the pain of in­com­pe­tence which had tak­en the sport for a ride to nowhere and back?

Here we are, at a junc­ture where the op­por­tu­ni­ty for mak­ing amends to the mis­takes of the in­cum­bent ad­min­is­tra­tion is re­al, and yet still, there is lit­tle or no de­sire to change the course.

Some­thing has al­ways en­tered my mind in the po­lit­i­cal are­na, that non- per­for­mance is the easy way to make ad­just­ments. If this is the case, where was the dri­ve to re­move the non- achiev­ing group and try to find peo­ple with some abil­i­ty in the re­spec­tive fields of sports man­age­ment.

The for­mer West In­dies crick­et cap­tain Clive Lloyd of­fered his ser­vices to make his con­tri­bu­tion once again to the game in the re­gion, this time off the field of play.

But lo and be­hold, he was un­able to get two of the coun­tries to qual­i­fy him for nom­i­na­tion. I was shocked to hear the voice of Lloyd on tele­vi­sion when he be­moaned the fact that he asked for sup­port from the TTCB and failed to get a pos­i­tive re­sponse.

What I have not heard is the name of the per­son to whom this coun­try has giv­en sup­port had gone. I refuse to be­lieve that we have passed up­on our right to vote for some­one whom we be­lieve can be ca­pa­ble to im­prove the state of West In­dies crick­et.

Are we to as­sume that the TTCB is sat­is­fied with the man­age­ment of the WICB with its present per­son­nel?

In the past, we were once the lead­ers in de­ci­sion-mak­ing in re­gion­al crick­et, and our sup­port for the pres­i­den­cy was al­ways re­spect­ed, de­spite the fact that the cho­sen ones may come from an­oth­er coun­try.

We are al­ways chal­leng­ing what is con­sid­ered poor de­ci­sions in team se­lec­tion, yet still, there is nev­er an ef­fort to seek an­swers from those that are giv­en the job as se­lec­tors.

In re­cent times, the new look pol­i­cy is to have re­gion­al tour­na­ment match­es played at the same time with the West In­dies, both in the re­gion as well.

How then could we judge the sta­tus of any coun­try in the re­gion­al se­ries? The pride and joy of each ter­ri­to­ry is based up­on win­ning the dif­fer­ent types of com­pe­ti­tion, but some coun­tries are woe­ful­ly short of their best play­ers be­cause they are on du­ty with the WI team.

I feel cer­tain that these match­es can be played at times which could al­low play­ers to rep­re­sent both teams. Re­cent­ly, T&T had eight se­lect­ed play­ers in the WI match against Zim­bab­we, while the na­tion­al team had to face Lee­wards with a sec­ond string squad.

Ex­act­ly what are the clubs do­ing about crick­et is­sues which are lit­er­al­ly de­stroy­ing the game right be­fore our very eyes. Are we a gut­less bunch of unimag­i­na­tive ad­min­is­tra­tors whose main aim is to re­tain their po­si­tions in of­fice? If not, then let the sport lov­ing pub­lic rec­og­nize the con­tri­bu­tion which can bring some form of im­prove­ment to the sport.

De­ci­sions of the TCBB must be based up­on what the clubs and oth­er stake­hold­ers be­lieve is best for the sport in the re­gion. There is no ev­i­dence of di­a­logue and if any­thing, the de­ci­sion to ig­nore our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is un­sat­is­fac­to­ry and not in keep­ing with the prin­ci­ples of good ad­min­is­tra­tion.

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