To­day is Ash Wednes­day, and its sig­nif­i­cance should not ever be lost on true fol­low­ers and in par­tic­u­lar sup­port­ers of West In­dies crick­et. The 40 days of the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar known as Lent will co­in­cide with prob­a­bly the most im­por­tant West In­di­an crick­et elec­tion in over fif­teen years on Sun­day 24th March in Ja­maica.

In the Bible and some an­tique cul­tures, ash­es were used to sym­bol­ize frailty, mourn­ing, sin and death, as well as re­pen­tance. ... And so it is that the death of the old self is a cen­tral theme in TS Eliot's po­em – Ash Wednes­day -, as well as the turn­ing (con­ver­sion) to a new path

This po­em best per­son­i­fies the im­por­tance of crick­et to over 6 mil­lion peo­ple in the Caribbean and be­yond. It is root­ed in our love of his­to­ry and the im­mense pride and pas­sion; the suc­cess of our crick­et team has brought to the hearts of all.

Just as the po­et­ry of West In­dies crick­et, has caused many to look on in awe, sev­er­al por­tions of this po­em, are de­scribed in var­i­ous forms and the corol­lary with West In­dies crick­et is both dis­turb­ing and re­veal­ing.

So on Ash Wednes­day, let us hope, those that be­lieve West In­dies crick­et is lost, be­cause they have no faith in the six ter­ri­to­r­i­al bod­ies en­trust­ed with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of care for the pop­u­lace of the re­gion. The stark re­al­i­ty though, is that those are at­tempt­ing to un­seat Dave Cameron af­ter six con­sec­u­tive years as Pres­i­dent, and more than 5 years in oth­er roles in West In­dies crick­et can­not eas­i­ly shrug off their col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in the demise and de­struc­tion of crick­et’s Caribbean fab­ric.

Un­like the cloth sold from those that trav­elled from Syr­ia, this cloth is home­made, hand worn, and sun­burnt over cen­turies, but ap­par­ent­ly not rich or healthy enough to en­cour­age the best minds to agree on what is best for the re­gion, rather than a few.

In the past, many be­lieve, that West In­dies Board mem­bers all ap­peared to be Hol­low Men, with no spine, no back­bone, and on­ly sought their stipends and over­seas trips and while the ev­i­dence of such ap­pears loose, the fact that West In­dies crick­et con­tin­ues to spi­ral down­wards, de­spite the pro­pa­gan­da and promis­es through var­i­ous me­dia per­sons.

In­ter­est­ing­ly in our very pop­u­lar Is­ports Boo Boo in Sports awards, Dave Cameron re­ceived over 29% of the votes amount­ing to 2,422 in to­tal but placed sec­ond to a crick­et rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board. This up­set many who felt that Cameron should have won, but as we ex­plained on the night of the an­nounce­ment, Cameron lost out on­line, where it was be­lieved that the younger crowd used so­cial me­dia more than the callers who reg­is­tered their names and votes via the phone. This is very sig­nif­i­cant as it meant; young peo­ple were the con­cern and blamed the TTCBC for the way that crick­et is be­ing run in the re­gion. Whether it was for in­su­lar or re­gion­al con­cern, young peo­ple’s mes­sage was damn­ing. And while we can cor­rect­ly claim that the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly vi­brant and pro­gres­sive and there­fore very dis­mis­sive of the hap­pen­ings in crick­et, there is a strong be­lief that such love, care and con­cern is eas­i­ly re­peat­ed else­where in the re­gion, es­pe­cial­ly Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and Guyana.

As we con­tin­ue to seek di­vine in­ter­ven­tion in crick­et, per­haps the words from in­ter­est­ing lit­er­a­ture.com are ap­pro­pri­ate in learn­ing our Lenten crick­et lessons on the po­em – Ash Wednes­day -.

In all of this, is there is a sign, is there sig­nif­i­cance that at the cen­tre of this bat­tle for Crick­et West In­dies Pres­i­den­cy be­tween Dave Cameron and Ricky Sker­ritt, is the re­cent­ly re-elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Ja­maica Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion(JCA), who has re­port­ed­ly stat­ed, that his as­so­ci­a­tion will not be vot­ing on cul­tur­al pat­ri­mo­ny grounds. Whether we can be­lieve that or not, on­ly time will tell, but at a time when so­cial me­dia’s ap­peal grows dai­ly, lead­ers on all fronts have to en­sure that they are trans­par­ent, oth­er­wise they will find that they are ac­count­able to more than they ever ex­pect­ed.

One would hope that both Cameron and Sker­ritt would de­cide on an open de­bate to give their views, but it says a lot about the men­tal­i­ty of the re­spec­tive crick­et boards (Bar­ba­dos, Guyana and Wind­ward Is­lands) if they have bla­tant­ly as re­port­ed in the me­dia, ig­nored the ef­forts to lis­ten to Ricky Sker­ritt and his team as­pi­ra­tions.