Watching cricket with Garfield Myers (see logo and pic)

Those who say Dave Cameron should continue as president of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) point to achievements in the last couple of years, among them the development of a professional four-day franchise system.

The problem though, is that given the US$41 million claim from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and their threat of a cessation of bilateral links with the WICB, the very future of West Indies cricket is in doubt, much less that franchise system.

To be fair, I was among those quietly applauding Cameron and his team, until the idiotic withdrawal of the West Indies from India in October.

For me, up to last October, perhaps the greatest achievement of the Cameron administration was the refreshing cooling of tensions and the absence of public quarrels between players and administrators. More than that, we heard that the senior professional players had actually agreed to give up part of their earnings to fund player development and the professional franchise.

I confess to having felt more than a twinge of disquiet. That sounds too good to be true, I thought. So it proved.

The smelly stuff hit the fan when the senior West Indies players, already on their tour of India, discovered in their belatedly delivered contracts perceived loss of earnings.

Apparently, they hadn’t made a stink before because, typical of the average young West Indian male, they hadn’t been paying attention. Many of us had heard of the players’ generosity; apparently they were the last to hear.

The Task Force set up by the WICB to probe the circumstances surrounding the catastrophe in India was very clear that it was the inadequate and scandalously belated ventilation of the contract terms which provided the trigger.

Note the Task Force comment: “We are of the view that the fundamental and overriding excuse for the players withdrawing their labour (refusing to play the 5th ODI and subsequent matches) was the attempted imposition of new contractual terms of employment on the players negotiated between the Board and WIPA, which the players saw for the first time after they got to India.

“There is something fundamentally wrong in sending a team to faraway places with only an historical view of their terms of employment and then to radically change those historical terms after they arrive in that distant place. It was the conclusion of the players in India that their compensation would be reduced by some seventy percent. In our view it is irrelevant whether their calculations were accurate or not. Sufficient to say that we, as a task force, even with the help of Mr. Gerard E. Pinard, a labour relations expert contracted by the Board to assist the Task Force, were unable to arrive with certainty at what compensation each player would receive in the new arrangement”.

Now of course the players were immature, even stupid, in choosing to walk out on the tour of India. They should have completed the tour under protest, while seeking legal and other recourse. That, after all, is precisely what happened when they agreed to tour South Africa, pending arbitration of their very serious differences with the WICB.

But it is at that point, in the days leading up to when the players totally lost their heads that I cast most blame on Cameron. To tell Dwayne Bravo and company that the WICB would only speak to them through their union was akin to throwing kerosene on a huge blaze. Everyone knew by then that the players in India had lost all trust and faith in the leadership of their union. They had said so in no uncertain manner.

If their priority was West Indies cricket then Cameron and his chief executive officer, should have boarded the first available flight to India in a bid to bring calm and restore good sense. The protection of West Indies cricket should have been their first priority, nothing else.

My own view is that had the WICB executive acted proactively to do all in its power to resolve the crisis and failed, they would have had the sympathy of most of the rest of us, including the all-powerful BCCI.

I hear that Cameron has said that he had the support of his Board of Directors in the decision not to go to India. If that is true, I say, ‘a pox on all their houses’. Those directors should all hang their heads and leave. They have boxed West Indies cricket into a corner largely of their making.

You’d think that with all that has happened Cameron would be out in the cold approaching the March elections. No such thing. We hear Guyana, Windward Islands and Leeward Islands are solidly behind him for president. And the JCA executive is under intense pressure to alter its decision to vote against him. Why? As much as anything else because of vulgar nationalistic jingoism: to hell with West Indies cricket, Jamaicans should support Jamaican.

West Indies cricket seems to exist in a kind of looking glass world. Everything turned back ways, upside down and very unreal.