In­su­lar­i­ty has of­ten been hid­den be­hind words, which if con­tex­tu­alised, will de­ceive on­ly the fool­hardy.

In­su­lar­i­ty in the Caribbean is as per­ti­nent to the in­di­vid­ual Caribbean is­lands just like roti, ac­k­ee and salt­fish, fly­ing fish and cou cou, fungee and pep­per pot, cur­ry goat and grog, goat wa­ter, pep­per­pot, roast­ed bread­fruit and fried jack fish.

So let us stop fool­ing our­selves and ad­dress the re­al­i­ty that so many dif­fer­ent cul­tures in these mod­ern (so­cial me­dia) times will not eas­i­ly be con­vinced by “words” but rather “ac­tion” will be the cri­te­ria that are used to judge the in­ten­tions of many at Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) now and go­ing for­ward.

Re­cent­ly, I had the im­mense plea­sure and priv­i­lege to have a dis­cus­sion with the great man, leg­endary for­mer West In­dies cap­tain Sir Clive Lloyd.

In the course of this talk, I asked him about how he was able to deal with all the var­i­ous play­ers from dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ries and among the many salient points he men­tioned, some stood out like a bea­con to me.

Sir Clive would some­times room two play­ers from dif­fer­ent coun­tries so they could un­der­stand each oth­er's cul­ture and per­haps most crit­i­cal­ly, he would room a bowler with a bats­man.

That Sir Clive wise­ly con­ceived would stir com­pe­ti­tion among the bowler and bats­man to out­do each oth­er in per­for­mance in the match which would on­ly ben­e­fit the team.

This sort of com­pe­ti­tion among play­ers would have left lit­tle time for any idle talk about in­di­vid­ual coun­tries and per­son­al pref­er­ences.

How­ev­er, I al­so re­mem­ber in­ter­view­ing an­oth­er lead­ing crick­eter dur­ing that era who stat­ed, that once Sir Clive Lloyd said some­thing, every­one bought in be­cause of the re­spect, in­tegri­ty, class and com­mit­ment, Sir Clive com­mand­ed among every play­er. “Once he knocked on your door for train­ing, you were ready, there was no ques­tion of ex­cus­es". There are many in­stances of the self­less­ness of the Sir Clive Lloyd era where play­ers put out every­thing for the team first and fore­most.

And this is what leads me to the con­clu­sion, that un­til CWI re­gains the con­fi­dence of the play­ers in the re­gion, many of our bet­ter play­ers will seek their own per­son­al re­wards and as any em­ploy­ee who is mis­treat­ed or un­fair­ly as­sessed and there­fore pun­ished and, in the case of crick­et, by se­lec­tors, coach­es, or ad­min­is­tra­tors turn their backs on the per­ceived wrong­do­ers. Sad­ly, we the peo­ple of the re­gion have been pay­ing that heavy price, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last 20 years.

It should not and will not sur­prise those who are fair-mind­ed that over the last num­ber of years, there has been a per­cep­tion that - Bar­ba­dos were bad­ly treat­ed (An­der­son Cum­mins boy­cott), T&T (when Deryck Mur­ray was left out), Guyana (Carl Hoop­er not se­lect­ed ), Ja­maica (Court­ney Walsh re­placed as cap­tain) and I am cer­tain there are many more ques­tions raised among the Lee­wards Is­lands coun­tries and Wind­ward Is­lands as well on their re­spec­tive play­ers.

Ac­tu­al­ly, the in­cum­bent coach/se­lec­tor - Dar­ren Sam­my - when he was ap­point­ed West In­dies cap­tain was “ac­cused" of be­ing favoured by a chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and a pres­i­dent of CWI ( then called West In­dies Crick­et Board) from his coun­try of birth St Lu­cia.

The point though that re­cent events in­volv­ing T&T play­ers, start­ing with the treat­ment of Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard when they were shock­ing­ly not se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent the West In­dies team when they were ob­vi­ous­ly at the “top of their ca­reers", is for me the wa­ter­shed mo­ment that not on­ly de­fined their fu­tures but al­so the West In­dies' for­tunes and per­haps even the de­ci­sion-mak­ing of many young West In­di­an play­ers who wit­nessed the in­jus­tice hand­ed down to them with no re­course and play­ers nat­u­ral­ly adopt­ed self-in­ter­est with ob­vi­ous fear of West In­di­an au­thor­i­ties.

This sus­pi­cion has not been as­sist­ed by the per­cep­tion that the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) has lost its bite or maybe its teeth are no longer nat­ur­al but rather acrylic den­tures.

There­fore, CWI needs to re­build trust that has been in­creas­ing­ly ques­tioned and maybe even erod­ed in cer­tain ter­ri­to­ries.

At the mo­ment, T&T play­ers have the ab­solute­ly un­fair treat­ment hand­ed down to Dar­ren Bra­vo over a six-year pe­ri­od and not con­signed to one group but more than one which his­to­ry will for­ev­er record. Re­cent­ly, in T&T, there have been ques­tions raised over the treat­ment of Joshua Da Sil­va, from the men­tion “ of the colour of his skin “ to “ his coun­try of birth" be­ing dis­cussed right­ly or wrong­ful­ly by some.

Just as with Dar­ren Bra­vo and so far with Da Sil­va, the ex­pla­na­tions or ra­tio­nale have not been as­sist­ed clear­ly as need­ed to avoid ques­tions and raised eye­brows.

I ask CWI to en­sure that de­ci­sion-mak­ers are held to ac­count by the peo­ple of the re­gion and I do not hear mean these “ jokey” me­dia con­fer­ences but per­haps some di­rect ques­tions in the var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries with per­sons not afraid to ruf­fle some feath­ers but of course the re­spec­tive per­sons who make the de­ci­sions must be so brave.

I wish to ac­knowl­edge both the pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low and the Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Op­er­a­tions Miles Bas­combe as well as the for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer John­ny Grave for on many oc­ca­sions brav­ing the me­dia and be­ing avail­able when oth­ers ap­pear not to be so in­clined.

That lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, that lack of aware­ness of ac­count­ing for ac­tion in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances will al­ways lead to the con­stant “doubt and doom” that cur­rent­ly pre­vails in West In­dies crick­et.

Now what is need­ed is some un­der­stand­ing and uni­ty be­tween play­ers and of­fi­cials but the first road to re­pair will in­volve TRUST on all sides. At this time, there is on­ly sus­pi­cion and doubt. And in the near fu­ture, lead­ing play­ers may call it a day from West In­dies crick­et be­cause this toothache needs a root canal.

The de­lay in an­nounc­ing the non-ap­pear­ance of two T&T play­ers, Akeal Ho­sein and Jyd Goolie, un­til the day af­ter the sto­ry broke in T&T fur­ther calls in­to ques­tion both com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty and sug­gests it may have been an at­tempt to hide un­til some­thing was solved. It is al­so pos­si­ble to be­lieve that the peo­ple of the re­gion have not re­ceived all the in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary on this UK visa im­passe.

Trust is loss. Trust needs to be re­stored if West In­dies crick­et is to make one step for­ward.