Anand Ram­per­sad

Blam­ing the T20 for­mat for mess­ing up West In­dies crick­et is very sim­plis­tic and fails to ac­knowl­edge the need to ad­just and adapt to the chang­ing face of crick­et.

His­to­ry will show the West In­dies have re­spond­ed pos­i­tive­ly to every for­mat of the game to dom­i­nate at some point in time. They were world test cham­pi­ons from 1980-1995, they were win­ners of the ICC World Cup in 1975, and 1979 and they were world T20 cham­pi­ons in 2012.

T20 is a con­tem­po­rary prod­uct that ap­peals to a cross sec­tion of stake­hold­ers- play­ers, spon­sors, ad­min­is­tra­tors and the gen­er­al pub­lic some of whom may not have any in­ter­est in the game but the fes­tive at­mos­phere.

T20 fits nice­ly in­to the mod­ern fast-paced world where time max­i­miza­tion and de­ter­mined out­comes are val­ued. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, T20 al­so of­fers en­ter­tain­ment which helps to re­lieve the stress­es and strains of the hec­tic mod­ern world.

T20 is here to stay and in­stead of mak­ing it cul­pa­ble for the cur­rent state of de­cline be­cause of a lack of ad­min­is­tra­tive fore­sight and re­peat­ed blun­ders it should be treat­ed fair­ly as one of the prod­ucts through which West In­di­an crick­eters can ex­hib­it their tal­ents and skills. When West In­dies was crowned World T20 Cham­pi­ons in 2012, wasn't that an­oth­er proud mo­ment in West In­dies his­to­ry for both the play­ers and the West In­di­an pub­lic?

The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, the de­cline of West In­dies crick­et start­ed not af­ter los­ing the Sir Frank Wor­rell Tro­phy to Aus­tralia in 1995 in the Caribbean but be­fore. Any econ­o­my that strives on nat­ur­al re­sources and fails to di­ver­si­fy, when the nat­ur­al re­sources are no more and or are un­com­pet­i­tive, the econ­o­my will suf­fer for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods.

Like­wise, when the con­stant stock of nat­ur­al tal­ent­ed play­ers be­gan to dwin­dle, the de­vel­op­men­tal sys­tems were not in place to en­sure that the re­place­ment play­ers were up to the stan­dard re­quired to not on­ly com­pete at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el but al­so dom­i­nate. The ques­tion of a tru­ly de­ter­mined West In­di­an iden­ti­ty is com­mon­ly bandied about by many com­men­ta­tors as miss­ing by the cur­rent crop of play­ers when com­pared to play­ers of the years gone by. And while this may be true, it is im­por­tant to be re­mind­ed of CLR James clas­sic 1963 work, Be­yond a Bound­ary, where he point­ed out that crick­et re­flect­ed the so­cio-eco­nom­ic struc­ture of so­ci­ety and the same holds to­day.

The fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence be­tween the con­tem­po­rary and past is that crick­et to­day is an eco­nom­ic prod­uct.

In the past crick­et was deeply con­nect­ed to the so­cial/po­lit­i­cal psy­che of not on­ly the play­ers but the spec­ta­tors. Any­one who have looked at and an­a­lyzed Fire in Baby­lon would un­der­stand that crick­et was more than a game.

This was best epit­o­mized when Eng­land's South African born cap­tain the late Tony Grieg said he would make "those West In­di­ans grov­el." Win­ning be­came im­por­tant as it re­vealed the strength and dig­ni­ty of a "Third World" peo­ple.

Glob­al cap­i­tal­ism through mar­ket forces and neo-clas­si­cal eco­nom­ics have been break­ing down the na­tion-state bar­ri­ers and re­defin­ing na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al iden­ti­ties. This is more ob­vi­ous in small de­vel­op­ing so­ci­eties like those of the Caribbean. Eco­nom­ics or more apt­ly mon­ey is the or­der of the day. Crick­et has be­come in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the cap­i­tal­ists sys­tem and have be­come com­mod­i­fied. A prac­ti­cal and re­al­is­tic ap­proach has to be un­der­tak­en to ar­rest the de­cline of West In­dies crick­et. The ad­min­is­tra­tors have to con­nect the eco­nom­ic and so­cio-his­tor­i­cal mean­ing of crick­et so as to pro­duce an iden­ti­ty that is un­der­stand­ing of the game's true mean­ing to West In­di­an peo­ple and ap­proach it like­wise.

Aus­tralia, Eng­land, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lan­ka, Pak­istan, and In­dia have been do­ing it.

Once this can done, then each for­mat can be viewed as a prod­uct that will have its own brand man­agers. Each prod­uct will be viewed as be­ing im­por­tant to the WICB, play­ers, spon­sors and the gen­er­al pub­lic.

Aus­tralia, Eng­land, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lan­ka, Pak­istan, and In­dia have been do­ing it. As the Aus­tralians tend to say, pick hors­es for cours­es. There­fore, T20 play­ers should not be ex­pect­ed to shore up the test team and vice ver­sa.

The purist may jump up and down ar­gu­ing that test crick­et is the ul­ti­mate form, to which there may be no deny­ing, how­ev­er, once the team con­tin­ues los­ing in this for­mat it will fail to at­tract sup­port. Large emo­tive crowds were com­mon when the West In­dies dom­i­nat­ed the world as they had de­vel­oped a win­ning cul­ture. Caribbean crowds are band­wag­o­nist and so loy­al­ty to a los­ing cul­ture will not be ap­peal­ing es­pe­cial­ly if the fes­tive at­mos­phere that is com­mon in T20 is ab­sent. Large crowds at test crick­et is pos­si­ble as was seen in re­cent test se­ries be­tween West In­dies and South Africa, Aus­tralia and In­dia and even New Zealand and Sri Lan­ka.

His­to­ry has shown that West In­di­an play­ers have been able to ad­just and adapt to dif­fer­ent for­mats. Ad­min­is­tra­tors have to man­age the dif­fer­ent for­mats smart­ly. Then there will be no need to blame T20 or any for­mat for any de­cline.