An­dre E Bap­tiste

In the last 48 hours, I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to watch two movies (or cin­e­ma flicks, de­pend­ing on which era you are from). One was called "In­cep­tion" (even though I had a bet­ter name for it) and the oth­er was "The Ex­pend­ables". In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, both these movies re­mind­ed me of the state of West In­dies crick­et. How many of you, would love to use the theme of the movie "In­cep­tion" to get in­to the minds of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) and the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa). In the case of the WICB, we would need to con­vince pres­i­dent Dr Julien Hunte while he is asleep that it would be bet­ter for him to re­tire now as pres­i­dent and put some­one ca­pa­ble in his po­si­tion. It will take a lot of work though to con­vince Hunte, that by do­ing this he would en­hance his rep­u­ta­tion and more im­por­tant­ly for­ev­er leave him with a cher­ished and ful­filled lega­cy. In a sim­i­lar vein, Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine could find him­self dream­ing amidst the qui­et of To­ba­go, even as his mind is fi­nal­ly made aware of the need for him to take a sab­bat­i­cal from Wipa and in­stead be­come a lawyer, giv­en his im­pos­ing record of vic­to­ries over the WICB.

The trick in both these cas­es as in the movie will be to con­vince both men, Hunte and Ram­nar­ine, that this was their idea, and that it will as­sist them in their fu­ture, not for one mo­ment must we al­low ei­ther of them to be­lieve that their joint re­moval would be for the ben­e­fit of crick­et, alas if we do that, then this mis­sion would fail. Even Tony Co­zi­er and Dr Hi­lary Beck­les could un­der­go some "In­cep­tion", to find out what is re­al­ly the truth be­hind their claim of seek­ing the best for West In­dies crick­et, while both en­vi­sion­ing very dif­fer­ent roles for the Com­bined Cam­pus and Col­lege (CCC) team, which on pa­per and in re­al­i­ty is two dif­fer­ent things. In re­al­i­ty the con­tin­u­al sa­cred re­li­gious dom­i­na­tion of Bar­ba­di­ans on the team has left a bit­ter taste in the mouth of many. Dr Beck­les' ses­sion would have to be longer, as most doc­tors are far more com­pli­cat­ed than oth­er peo­ple and he does not un­der­stand the opin­ion of most in the re­gion, that this team is a sec­ond rat­ed Bar­ba­di­an squad. The next step would be to find some­one who is ca­pa­ble of do­ing all of this. We need a con­fi­dent per­son, who knows what he is do­ing and is not afraid to an­noy oth­ers, so that he can get to the bot­tom of all the prob­lems in West In­dies crick­et.

There would be many who would nom­i­nate them­selves for this role, but most would be dis­qual­i­fied be­cause they were ei­ther Guyanese or Trin­bag­on­ian or Bar­ba­di­an or Ja­maican or An­tiguan or Grena­di­an or of some oth­er Caribbean is­land. Be­cause the truth is we are a bunch of in­su­lar be­ings that are all afraid to ad­mit the truth about our di­vine in­su­lar­i­ty, so in keep­ing with the theme in this coun­try, I would hire a cit­i­zen of Eng­land not the Unit­ed States or Cana­da (but keep a close watch on any mon­e­tary arrange­ments). As for "The Ex­pend­ables" when I look at the three West In­dies se­lec­tors Clyde Butts, Robert Haynes and Court­ney Browne, I can on­ly say what comes to the minds of most tru­ly loy­al West In­di­an fans (and not in­tro­vert­ed Caribbean na­tion­al­ists), that these men make the name "Ex­pend­ables" seem a joke. That is, I be­lieve we would not lose any­thing by ask­ing three el­der­ly gen­tle­men to be­come West In­di­an se­lec­tors again, Jack­ie Hen­dricks, Michael Find­lay and Michael "Joey" Carew. In­di­vid­u­al­ly any of three vet­er­ans knowl­edge would still far out­weigh what we have got as se­lec­tors, clear­ly three ex­pend­ables would be bet­ter than the has beens: Butts, Haynes and Browne.

Per­haps the root cause in all of this dra­ma and com­e­dy, that is West In­dies crick­et, is the fact that those who write the scripts are so small mind­ed (the ex­ec­u­tive of the WICB), that it is im­pos­si­ble for their minds to ever un­der­stand that the big­ger pic­ture of West In­dies crick­et is for­got­ten. How­ev­er it would be re­miss not to try to un­der­stand the crick­et com­mit­tee un­der Clive Lloyd and com­pre­hend, how they make some of the choic­es they have in the past and en­quire just how much the in­flu­ence of oth­ers (apart from the crick­et com­mit­tee mem­bers)�play in their fi­nal se­lec­tion.

Per­haps it is the fact, that Lloyd does not spend enough time in the Caribbean so as to be aware of the cares and wish­es of the peo­ple. With that in mind, we can rec­om­mend the fol­low­ing for a ses­sion with the "In­cep­tion" of­fi­cer: Tony Howard, Dr Ernest Hillar­ie, Joel Gar­ner, Dr Allen Sam­my, Chetram Singh, Paul Camp­bell Gre­go­ry Shilling­ford and Clive Lloyd. And even as we dis­cuss "In­cep­tion" and "The Ex­pend­able" as it re­lates to West In­dies crick­et, we may all be­lieve that here­in lies the so­lu­tion to West In­dies crick­et, the fact that sev­er­al of the lead­ers of this sport are still caught in a time warp, where they be­lieve they are the "star boys" and need to have their names in the lime­light.

With that in mind, one has to won­der which movie will be­come ap­plic­a­ble to the se­lec­tion of the 15 cen­tral­ly con­tract­ed West In­di­an play­ers, giv­en the in­fight­ing be­tween WIPA and the WICB; this all ap­pears to be a les­son in fu­til­i­ty, as both par­ties do not nec­es­sar­i­ly agree or know of the rules of such a con­tract. In fact, giv­en the huge sums now be­ing bran­dished in crick­et, it would ap­pear that soon­er rather than lat­er this con­tract­ed busi­ness will cease to ex­ist, as play­ers will soon re­alise that they can earn much more out­side of the chains of a cen­tral con­tract. That notwith­stand­ing, it would be crit­i­cal to un­der­stand the pro­ce­dure in­volved in all of this, oth­er­wise West In­dies crick­et could ap­pro­pri­ate­ly be called "True Lies". Here is my 15 play­ers that should ob­tain cen­tral re­tain­er con­tracts from Oc­to­ber 1–Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sar­wan, Dwayne Bra­vo, Ke­iron Pol­lard, Ke­mar Roach, Bren­dan Nash, Adri­an Bharath, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Dar­ren Sam­my, Jerome Tay­lor, De­nesh Ramdin, Sul­lie­man Benn, Niki­ta Miller, Nars­ingh De­onar­ine. But then, I am just a mere mem­ber of the pub­lic, so who cares what we think?