I orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed to fin­ish my state­ment on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a re­vival of hope for West In­dies crick­et in last week’s col­umn. More­over, I have at times dur­ing the last Aus­tralian and Pak­istani se­ries felt a droop­ing of my shoul­ders and the loss of en­thu­si­asm for a re­sus­ci­ta­tion of our crick­et.

It’s a feel­ing that has been ex­pe­ri­enced and ex­pressed by many of the most ar­dent and be­liev­ing of West In­di­ans about the desul­to­ry state of our crick­et as we have gone through a pe­ri­od of a clear ab­sence of plan­ning and pur­pose to give in­spi­ra­tion that we can move away from the sta­sis of the last 20 to 25 years.

In such cir­cum­stances, more so as the in­sti­tu­tion charged with de­vel­op­ing and ad­min­is­ter­ing our crick­et has proven to be in­her­ent­ly and clin­i­cal­ly in­ca­pable of di­ag­nos­ing the ill­ness and so be in a po­si­tion to cre­ate the con­di­tions for re­lief of the mal­a­dy, it has been easy to con­clude that as a crick­et-play­ing na­tion we have had per­haps more than our share of hav­ing great epochs of un­ri­valled dom­i­nance as a team. We have pro­duced dozens of crick­eters who can be named amongst the great­est the game has seen any­where in the crick­et-play­ing world and in the three ma­jor for­mats of the con­tem­po­rary game.

Hav­ing had such a his­to­ry of great par­tic­i­pa­tion and in­ven­tive bril­liance, we should humbly with­draw our as­pi­ra­tions and yield to the view that we have had our run and so re­solve our­selves to hold­ing on to mem­o­ries with­out ex­pec­ta­tion of a re­turn to great­ness, or even sim­ply be­ing com­pet­i­tive.

But over the last few days, I have re­turned to the po­si­tion of be­ing ful­ly as­sured that West In­dies as a crick­et-play­ing na­tion can once again rise to that sta­tus of great­ness, and this is based on our record of daz­zling and foun­da­tion­al achieve­ment over the near­ly 100 years of our par­tic­i­pa­tion at the high­est lev­els of the game.

In all of my think­ing from the top of re­al­is­tic as­pi­ra­tion, I have been but­tressed by the con­vic­tion that we have it with­in our crick­et-play­ing sinews, genes, and our con­quests, as Prof Rex Net­tle­ford used to tell his stu­dents about “the great West In­di­an Imag­i­na­tion” through the pow­er of our minds to re­turn.

More­over, it can­not be that we as a na­tion can sim­ply walk away from the her­itage left by our an­ces­tors.

To leave be­hind the wealth of our crick­et lega­cy ced­ed to us by our galaxy of play­ers from our en­try in­to crick­et in 1928, from our first Test team through to the 1950s, the 1960s, when we re­vived Test crick­et, to the un­par­al­leled achieve­ments of great­ness of the 1970s, to even the turn in­to the 20th, and to sim­ply walk away from that her­itage will be to hurt the pride of our crick­et­ing he­roes and the tra­di­tion they have laid down for us as a West In­di­an peo­ple.

At an­oth­er lev­el, we must, of ne­ces­si­ty, con­sid­er the eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial cost of walk­ing away from such re­sources cre­at­ed by our most valu­able re­source, the hu­man mind. Just think for a mo­ment of the eco­nom­ic val­ue of in­ter­na­tion­al sport and, in this in­stance, crick­et, of to­day.

How do we be­gin to cal­cu­late the ex­port val­ue of our crick­et pro­fes­sion­als start­ing from Learie Con­stan­tine and George Headley, the gen­er­a­tion of Sir Gary Sobers, Ro­han Kan­hai, Andy Roberts, Sir Vi­vian Richards, Michael Hold­ing, our pro­fes­sion­al Ker­ry Pack­er team, and what the present pro­fes­sion­als in fran­chise crick­et have earned?

The re­al val­ue of pro­fes­sion­al crick­et to­day, and even con­sid­er­ing what suc­ceed­ing West In­dies crick­et boards have not made use of, shows earn­ings and po­ten­tial earn­ings from crick­et can be “pound for pound”—to use box­ing ter­mi­nol­o­gy—con­sid­ered one of the great­est ex­port-earn­ing ac­tiv­i­ties of the West In­dies as a na­tion.

Then there’s the very tan­gi­ble val­ue of our crick­et and crick­eters to the West In­di­an civil­i­sa­tion in the re­gion and that which has spread around the world in the Di­as­po­ra: the pride of achieve­ment and con­tri­bu­tion to world civil­i­sa­tion al­ready made and that which is to come if all of us make our con­tri­bu­tion to re­vival.

To ef­fec­tive­ly do so, we have to move from be­ing cyn­i­cal to “ral­ly­ing round the West In­dies”, the the­mat­ic in­struc­tion giv­en to us by one of our great bards.

It is pos­si­ble that the re­sponse of the CWI of­fi­cials to call in­to ex­is­tence the team of Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Vi­vian Richards and Bri­an Lara is meant to be a good Tri­ni ma­m­aguy to cov­er their ex­posed un­der­gar­ments of non-achieve­ment.

If that turns out to be so, we must place faith in the “Three Wise Men” to refuse to be so un­con­scionably used by these less­er hu­mans. All of us must en­sure that the tri­umvi­rate of think­ing tal­ent must in­sist on long-term and fun­da­men­tal so­lu­tions re­lat­ed to trans­form­ing how the game is or­gan­ised, coached and played through­out the re­gion.

Fun­da­men­tal­ly and in­sis­tent­ly, the three must tell the CWI that bat­ting is on­ly one el­e­ment of the game; bowl­ing, field­ing, think­ing and re­turn­ing to a sense of pride must be at­tend­ed to and re­for­mu­lat­ed. Noth­ing less will suf­fice.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine–In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.