What a sur­prise! Sir Gary Sobers, one of the 'icons' of West In­dies crick­et, has called for a change in at­ti­tude of the play­ers and for se­ri­ous de­ci­sions to be tak­en if West In­dies crick­et is to get back where it should and used to be.

Not a mo­ment too soon as West In­dies crick­et is in mor­tal dan­ger.

He said, in a cer­e­mo­ny in his na­tive Bar­ba­dos, that the play­ers must be­gin think­ing about crick­et as a team game and about how they can con­tribute to get­ting it back to the top. He em­pha­sised how im­por­tant it was to the fans, for whom they were play­ing and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty they had to do their best to sat­is­fy the le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tions of their fans. He did not men­tion ful­fil­ment of their own as­pi­ra­tions and pride in their own per­for­mance. Be­ing who and what he was, he took that for grant­ed.

He ac­knowl­edged that they - the past play­ers - had a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and could con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment and mo­ti­va­tion of the new teams. "I think it will come around to that. The past will come around to the present," he said.

It is re­mark­able how many for­mer West In­dies crick­eters are now coach­ing oth­er Test teams. We are in­clined to over­look the fact that Sir Gary was the de­vel­op­er of Sri Lan­ka, as they were seek­ing to get Test sta­tus.

West In­di­an At­ti­tude

How very West In­di­an in their at­tack­ing and pos­i­tive play they are all still! Think of Jaya­suria and Jayawar­dene dev­as­tat­ing bowlers and of the likes of Chamin­da Vaas and the young Mal­im­ga on the at­tack against bats­men, of Mu­rali tor­ment­ing bats­men and en­joy­ing his game as he col­lects in ex­cess of 600 Test wick­ets and there is a touch of the best West In­dies at­ti­tude to their game.

Gor­don Greenidge was the coach of Bangladesh when they were seek­ing Test sta­tus and see how they have pro­gressed.

Ire­land, Zim­bab­we, Kenya, Bermu­da and Cana­da have West In­di­an coach­es and South Africa has ben­e­fit­ed from the ef­forts of Con­rad Hunte as a coach and sev­er­al West In­dies pro­fes­sion­als play­ing in their com­pe­ti­tions. Lat­est of all, Eng­land has en­gaged Otis Gib­son, for­mer Bar­ba­dos and Windies play­er, as their bowl­ing coach.

The West In­dies Crick­et Board, mean­while, stu­dious­ly ig­nores home grown coach­es and brings in men who have no track record, ei­ther as a suc­cess­ful coach or as a play­er who would have the tech­ni­cal qual­i­ty and the ex­pe­ri­ence to as­sist our teams to max­imise their po­ten­tial.

As the West In­dies team wal­lows in the depths of medi­oc­rity, Bar­ba­dos, the for­mer pow­er­house of West In­dies crick­et, the is­land that pro­duced the likes of Man­nie Mar­tin­dale, the glo­ri­ous W's, Sir Gary, Sey­mour Nurse, Wes Hall and Char­lie Grif­fith, Greenidge & Haynes, Mar­shall, Gar­ner - the most out­stand­ing among a galaxy of bril­liant and pro­duc­tive play­ers - has re­cent­ly urged the oth­er ter­ri­to­ries to fol­low the de­vel­op­ment pat­tern of TTCB.

Se­ri­ous De­ci­sions

Maybe there is hope that we will all get to­geth­er to find a com­mon, ac­cept­able way to groom our play­ers from ear­ly school­days - groom them, not mere­ly in tech­nique but in the at­ti­tudes and prac­tices that would make them al­ways give their best and think pos­i­tive­ly of them­selves as a match for any­body. To jus­ti­fy this, they must ac­cept and adopt phys­i­cal and men­tal train­ing regimes that would en­sure that they are al­ways at their best when com­pet­ing.

Sir Gary talks of se­ri­ous de­ci­sions that must be tak­en and one im­me­di­ate­ly thinks of the de­struc­tive stand-off be­tween the WICB, on the one hand and the WIPA on the oth­er. Both bod­ies are there to en­sure the best per­for­mance of West In­dies crick­et in all as­pects. The WICB must seek the best in­ter­ests of West In­dies criket and that in­cludes most def­i­nite­ly, the best in­ter­ests of West In­dies crick­eters, with­out whom there would be no WICB.

WIPA is the body which seeks he in­ter­ests of West In­dies crick­eters and that must in­clude the in­ter­est of West In­dies Crick­et - with­out which there will be no crick­eters.

Both bod­ies seek their own in­ter­ests with­out recog­nis­ing that some­times, in cer­tain cir­cum­stances it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly for us as against them. WICB and WIPA are akin to the heart and lungs in a hu­man be­ing. Nei­ther can op­er­ate with­out the healthy oth­er. Sim­i­lar­ly, a healthy WIPA needs a healthy WICB for crick­et and crick­eters to flour­ish.

To get past this crip­pling sit­u­a­tion, it is more than time for an ac­cept­able me­di­a­tor to sit with the par­ties, in­di­vid­u­al­ly and to­geth­er to hear both sides of the same prob­lem. Then, a mu­tu­al­ly ac­cept­able modus operan­di may be con­ceived and un­di­vid­ed at­ten­tion of both par­ties may be paid to crick­et - the best West In­di­an crick­et.