Bar­ba­dos and Guyana should be ashamed.

Guyana and Bar­ba­dos have demon­strat­ed, what we all knew ex­ist­ed. Self-in­ter­est ahead of re­gion­al in­ter­est.

Mankind ruled by un­kind.

Alas, peo­ple of the Caribbean, I am re­fer­ring to the crick­et boards and not Cari­com on this oc­ca­sion.

When the news fil­tered through on Sun­day, that the awe­some four­some, from the crick­et boards of Bar­ba­dos and Guyana, were in­ex­plic­a­bly ab­sent from the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) of Crick­et West In­dies (CWI), many were left not en­tire­ly sur­prised. A post­pone­ment of the AGM be­came in­evitable if not un­avoid­able.

Ear­ly on in this elec­tion con­test, it was clear that the com­bi­na­tion of Anand Sanasie and Calvin Hope had on­ly one in­ten­tion, giv­en the fact, that from all ap­pear­ances their com­bined ef­forts would fall flat at the feet of the oth­er four ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards. But to sub­ject West In­dies crick­et, at this time to such painful child­ish grow­ing pains ma­noeu­vres, sug­gest both a mind still in the wilder­ness and an­oth­er in pur­ga­to­ry.

Of the for­tu­nate four, it is un­cer­tain, whether the ar­chi­tect of this "build and de­stroy" is a friend or foe? 

For too long the truth is, in­su­lar­i­ty, the bed­fel­low of many West In­di­ans has been hid­den be­neath ap­par­ent words of wis­dom from a few, but now it seems, these per­sons are will­ing to not on­ly ex­pose their true colours but al­so burn their an­cient ideas and robes in pub­lic.

Bar­ba­dos and Guyana, at this time of re­pen­tance and in the sea­son that is Lenten, have com­plete­ly ig­nored the greater good, the as­cen­sion of West In­dies crick­et and in­stead thought of "We", not "WI".  Less both Sanasie and Hope be none the wis­er, "E" and "I" are not in­ter­change­able here.

The fact is that near­ly every­one with an in­de­pen­dent mind be­lieves that both on and off the field, West In­dies crick­et is mov­ing for­ward, and while every­one wants bet­ter re­sults and many want his or her coun­try­man to be se­lect­ed when the West In­dies win, every­one is joy­ous.

The ad­vanced rea­son by some of the fick­le folk of these men is that no fi­nan­cial state­ments were made avail­able in the req­ui­site time pe­ri­od, even though the ap­par­ent his­to­ry of this or­gan­i­sa­tion over the years has sad­ly been one and the same.

This ex­er­cise in frus­tra­tion and ul­ti­mate­ly fu­til­i­ty demon­strates the ner­vous re­sponse to both men seek­ing elec­tion was jus­ti­fied. Nev­er­the­less, it has been re­vealed that on Sat­ur­day, March 27, all full mem­ber­ship rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­firm re­ceipt of AGM doc­u­ments and con­firm their at­ten­dance.

Men, who can­not stick to their word, can­not be trust­ed.

And while Anand Sanasie seems to have his own bug­bears and itchy in­sects bites to deal with in his home­land, one won­ders why he can­not use the time on his hands to en­sure that the Guyana Crick­et Board can fi­nal­ly come out of the courts and be reg­u­larised.

As for Calvin Hope, there is lit­tle doubt that his strings, much like one of the char­ac­ters from "The Mup­pets", is not his own. In fact, the en­tire Caribbean would be in­ter­est­ed to know, why is it, that the in­cum­bent Bar­ba­dos Crick­et Board (BCA) head­man – Conde Ri­ley - is not the run­ning part­ner of Sanasie. Some have in­sin­u­at­ed that Ri­ley hates to lose or worst yet, play sec­ond fid­dle to any­one, even some con­clude, to the cur­rent in­cum­bent pres­i­dent of CWI who is his boss.

Two years af­ter, one pres­i­dent was de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly re­moved by a sea of dis­sat­is­fac­tion in­fect­ing the re­gion, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ters, and mere hours af­ter it was re­vealed that 2022 ap­pears to be one of the most lu­cra­tive years for our crick­et and there­fore our young men and women, we have this das­tard­ly deed.

Wait…Wait …Wait...I did say, "Lu­cra­tive". It is the type of word that can draw peo­ple in from far dis­tances and fer­ment taste­less thoughts, less we all be not vig­i­lant.

Let us though be clear, Messrs. Faizal Bac­chus and Dru Ba­hadur (Guyana) and Ja­son King and Gre­go­ry Nicholls (Bar­ba­dos) have set the bar for West In­dies crick­et even low­er than ever en­vis­aged. These four men will have to watch them­selves each day and ac­count to their peers and love ones, on what they have cre­at­ed and the dis­turb­ing im­age of dis­uni­ty again.

The West In­dies may be small in num­ber com­pared to some of the oth­er crick­et­ing na­tions but it was crick­et­ing leg­ends that made us "large and alive", now it seems some Bar­ba­di­ans of­fi­cers and their Guyanese ac­com­plices, seek to play “Ju­das”.

As West In­di­ans, we should al­ways think first, about what is best for the re­gion and not our friends or bene­fac­tors. The smile on most of the faces of our West In­di­an play­ers in all ver­sions of the game, can­not be a co­in­ci­dence but is a clear in­di­ca­tion, that de­spite every­thing, no one is be­ing vic­timised for speak­ing their mind.

George Bernard Shaw is fa­mous­ly record­ed as hav­ing said, "The sin­gle biggest prob­lem in com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the il­lu­sion that it has tak­en place.”  So we can on­ly hope that some­one in au­thor­i­ty can prop­er­ly com­mu­ni­cate to Bar­ba­dos and Guyana, the er­ror of their ways and not leave it to oth­ers with agen­das.  

Both Bar­ba­dos and Guyana have con­tributed mag­nif­i­cent­ly to West In­dies "on the field" per­for­mances and to at­tempt to bring West In­dies crick­et to its el­bows (hav­ing been on its knees over six years ago), is not on­ly mis­guid­ed but can be pos­si­bly aligned from the Gael­ic cam (crooked) and sron (nose) de­f­i­n­i­tion.

West In­dies crick­et is big­ger than any one man, any one group, any one race, any one coun­try and most im­por­tant­ly might­i­er than Cari­com in uni­fy­ing the re­gion.

Nev­er let us for­get this, de­spite the mis­cre­ants that abound.