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Thursday, July 24, 2025

There must always be hope for the future of our cricket

by

20131229

If you sur­vived oil spills, dead­ly weath­er, road rage and gun-hap­py sit­u­a­tions, Hap­py New Year 2014!What we can do is to not sim­ply hope or pray for the best, but put things, and right peo­ple, in­to prop­er places and po­si­tions, to ef­fect that spe­cial change that our crick­et ab­solute­ly needs. De­spite lim­it­ed suc­cess, West In­dies crick­et can­not con­tin­ue with busi­ness as usu­al!2013 was a strange year, re­gion­al­ly, for our crick­et, the most pos­i­tive high­light be­ing stag­ing of in­au­gur­al Caribbean Pre­mier League. Joy, ex­cite­ment and en­ter­tain­ment were to be had! 2013 opened with West In­dies play­ing Aus­tralia, in OZ, in ODI and T-20 se­ries. West In­dies lost the ODI's 5-0, but, not sur­pris­ing­ly, won T-20 se­ries. Hav­ing won ODI #1 vs New Zealand to date, at least WI will not close 2013 as it start­ed, but that se­ries vs NZ is not yet fin­ished. Sat­ur­day night's (Caribbean time) 2nd game will con­tin­ue that sto­ry!

West In­dies con­firmed, as pre­vi­ous­ly pre­dict­ed here, af­ter win­ning ICC World T-20, in Oc­to­ber 2012, that our team is much more com­fort­able for short­er forms of the game than in Tests. How they will breach that mas­sive gap to be­ing back in Test con­tention must be the ob­jec­tive for 2014.But wait! Some­thing has al­ready gone away with that plan, has it not? Does this make any sense?How could present head coach, Ot­tis Gib­son, be al­lowed to in­ves­ti­gate him­self, as re­cent­ly pro­posed, that he and new di­rec­tor of crick­et, Richard Py­bus, are to plan West In­dies' resur­gence in­to Test crick­et, af­ter the very dis­taste­ful, dis­grace­ful Test de­ba­cles of In­dia and New Zealand? Was it not the same Gib­son at the head of the team when WI bad­ly lost four, rain sav­ing that fifth loss, of the last five Tests, in In­dia and New Zealand, late in 2013?And we won­der? 2014 must con­jure up bet­ter than this!Where is the West In­dies Prime Min­is­ter's Com­mit­tee on crick­et in all this? Where are po­lit­i­cal crick­et lovers like Grena­da's Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Mitchell, for­mer Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter PJ Pat­ter­son, even Trinidad and To­ba­go's Sports Min­is­ter, Anil Roberts, in all this?

So, West In­dies first home se­ries for 2013 was an easy 2-0 Test se­ries win, and 3-0 ODI se­ries win, vs low­ly Zim­bab­we, a team just com­ing back to in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et. Off spin­ner Shane Shilling­ford, to al­so fea­ture in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions late in 2013, was un­playable, 19 Test wick­ets in this se­ries. Se­vere­ly dark clouds had al­ready formed for him!Shilling­ford had pre­vi­ous­ly been in­struct­ed by ICC to have his ac­tion cor­rect­ed a year ago.This was sup­pos­ed­ly done by the same West In­dies coach­ing per­son­nel, who al­lowed him to bowl on in 2013, on­ly to be se­vere­ly em­bar­rassed again, his ac­tion again negat­ed by ICC and its of­fi­cials, in NZ.Is there not some­thing wrong here, or am I crazy?I could not care less as to whom so ever bowler from any oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al teams who may be "bowl­ing" il­le­gal­ly. My con­cern is about West In­dies crick­eters, those who rep­re­sent me!Ini­tial­ly, af­ter his first as­sess­ment in Aus­tralia, it was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty WICB and its coach­es to en­sure that Shilling­ford's bowl­ing ac­tion was prop­er­ly cor­rect­ed, so that he could pass ICC muster. Now that he has been, again, negat­ed by ICC's um­pires dur­ing West In­dies tour of NZ 2013, it is again sug­gest­ed that West In­dies coach­es must be the ones to cor­rect his ac­tion again.

What! Is this not re­al full mad­ness? Per that say­ing: "If you con­tin­ue to do the same thing, then you can on­ly ex­pect to get the same re­sults!"Any­way, many West In­dies heads should have rolled af­ter Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy, June 2013, in UK, when our se­nior bats­men at the crease, Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard, and team man­age­ment per­son­nel, seemed not to be able to ei­ther read or un­der­stand the high-light­ed Duck­worth-Lewis com­pu­ta­tions.Thus the game vs South Africa was tied, per Duck­worth-Lewis, when, had West In­dies not lost Pol­lard's wick­et on that last de­liv­ery be­fore rain came, West In­dies would have won and pro­gressed to the semis.For high­light­ing this in­ep­ti­tude, I re­ceived e-mails and tele­phone calls, 13 min­utes worth, from, sup­pos­ed­ly, Grand Poo­ba of WI crick­et, sug­gest­ing that "now is a new time for West In­dies crick­et, and that he and WICB would not tol­er­ate me in West In­dies crick­et un­less I change my cri­tiquing style of West In­dies crick­et!"

Well, you must have heard of Ed­ward Swow­den by now, who has leaked many of USA's NSA se­crets. I know for fact that, since 1989, all of my tele­phone calls and e-mails are al­ways mon­i­tored, since I had worked for USA Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment and de­fence con­trac­tor Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies/Pratt & Whit­ney in the past.Hence, those e-mails and tele­phone calls made to me, mid-June 2013, still ex­ist in voice and text.Al­so, In­dia and Sri Lan­ka played tri-ODI se­ries vs WI, and Pak­istan toured WI for ODI's too, our team far­ing bad­ly against each, be­fore go­ing to In­dia and New Zealand to be fur­ther an­ni­hi­lat­ed.2013 was a poor in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et year for WI. Hope for bet­ter in 2014. En­joy!


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