I greeted the news of the FIFA corruption arrests with a shrug of the shoulders and a ‘so what’s new?’ This has been expected ever since the controversial award of the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 Cup to Qatar. Indeed, in an article on June 22, 2014, I suggested that we should “enjoy the beautiful game as it unfolds on your television screen, but expect the football world to erupt in a whirlwind of controversy as we zero in on the shenanigans behind the selection of wealthy Qatar for the 2022 finals. Serious questions are bound to be asked as to how on Earth Sepp Blatter and his team could have guided FIFA to come to this decision. A British newspaper has already broken stories alleging that secret payments were made by Qatar to win the bid.

“Second thoughts are being given to this choice, especially when the heat of the Arabian summer is taken into consideration. The 2018 Cup is also stirring up some controversy as the selection of Russia was a surprise to many.”

The equally scandalous news is that up to the time of writing this article, Sepp Blatter was still gunning for FIFA presidency rights up to the day before the scheduled elections (May 29). Somewhere along the way the post of president, it is said, became the most powerful position in international sports. Blatter has enjoyed this privilege for four terms and apparently regards it as a post for life.

What is it about elevated positions in sports administrations that encourages people to want to occupy them forever? The truth is that people like to be called ‘Mr President’ and ‘Mr Chairman’, and enjoy the bowing and scraping from their colleagues that go along with the posts. I have seen many an elected head of some sport position become rotten spoilt by the adulation after a taste of the chair. And this occurs at any level, be it national, parochial, or district.

The FIFA presidency is a particular plum. Along with it go power, influence, a limousine entourage, fawning officials, luxurious offices and accommodations, royal receptions when travelling to outposts, and media and public attraction for every nuance and every word uttered.

This does not apply to sports alone. It is a weakness that affects the entire gamut of leadership positions available in societal or government administrations. Then good friends become estranged and can only be referred to as chairman this or president that.

This kind of adoration is not bestowed by virtue of a professional ranking earned by diligent study and application, for example, teacher, doctor, manager, or nurse.

The chairmanship may have been earned, instead, by a process of election, good fortune, connections, subterfuge, and in-fighting. Or ideally, and in many instances, afforded to the labourer worthy of his hire.

Different ballgame

The FIFA crisis shares the sports spotlight with the axing of Shivnarine Chanderpaul from the West Indies team. This is going to be in the news for a long time to come as disappointment and protests spread around the region. I am one of those in disagreement with the reasons given by the West Indies Cricket Board for his dismissal. If this new ‘youth team’ is going to be built on the altar of sacrifice and summary dismissal of one of your finest players, then you are asking for trouble.

Chanderpaul was not only a key member of the team because of his batting abilities, fading though they may be. He was a team man, and those have been hard to find in recent years. He was the rock of the innings, the strong foundation when the team failed time and again. Batsmen crumbled around him in this present era of mediocre West Indies cricket. But time and again he remained at the crease. In this Australian tour, when we face the world’s best and will need all our marbles, Chanderpaul will be sorely missed. Mark my words!

And for the manner of his dismissal, I find it hard to believe that one of my heroes, Clive Lloyd, could not make contact with him anywhere he might have been in this world. What are cellular telephones for? He has been dismissed in a most cavalier fashion. “He didn’t fit in,” says head coach Phil Simmons, warning the fans that “it’s not about sentiment, it’s not about giving someone two Tests to finish their career”. So we have given up the packed stands in order to pick the best available players who cannot walk in Chanderpaul’s shoes. Don’t get me wrong, he has been going though a rough patch and has endured a precipitous drop in form over the past two series. But, let me tell you something, those who make our cricket decisions and, indeed, our cricket heroes, must tread warily against the background of what cricket has meant to the building of nationhood and independence in the region.

Cricket, according to Ian McDonald in his introduction to Wisden’s Caribbean Cricket, often seems to be the sharpest definition of West Indian nationhood. He refers to Beyond A Boundary by C L R James and explains that England fashioned its own national image from the exploits and deeds of their national legends, the Crusaders, Richard the Lionheart, Lord Nelson, Churchill.

“But for West Indies, our world is patterned off the exploits, not of heroes of war or parliament, but our icons on the cricket field.” McDonald, in his brilliant foreword goes on to describe them: “The mighty Challenor, marvellous Martindale, the leaping Constantine, Headley in all his glorious defiant genius.”

“Then those two friends of mine, Ramadhin and Valentine, the silken elegance of Stollmeyer; Collie Smith, the boy genius; the indescribable magic of Kanhai, the incomparable Sobers.

“Hall’s entry into Sabina Park from the southern end to the roar of the crowd, Griffiths his inseparable partner, the great Gibbs who could spin a ball on marble ground and make it bounce like a feather, the immortal three Ws, and the tied Test with little Joe Solomon caught forever in that famous picture throwing down the last wicket.

“Then there is Roy Fredericks hooking Lillee and Thompson to the Perth boundary. Holding, he of the whispering death; Greenidge and Haynes, Lloyd and his magnificent pride of fast bowlers, Richards, the Master Blaster; the graceful Carl Hooper, stalwarts Walsh and Ambrose; Lara, the Prince; and hundreds others.”

We could have stopped at George Headley and warned Simmons that’s where it all started. Let us put and play cricket in its proper historical perspective, and let it, like the achievements of Chanderpaul and others, stay there.

The same year that Headley stepped on the international stage, 1929, is the same year that Marcus Garvey founded the People’s Political Party in Jamaica.

It can be studied how the West Indies emerged as a Test playing region in the decade that followed, which coincided with the political and cultural movement that marked the early stirrings for Independence across the British Caribbean. Headley’s centuries during that period resonated with Garvey’s call for dominion status for Jamaica in 1929.

Fittingly, it was an epochal moment in cricket history that capped that eventful decade with Headley’s immortal 106 and 107 at Lords in 1939.

So the manner of the axing of Chanderpaul seems, to me, to reveal a grave misunderstanding by the selectors of what cricket means to the population. In those early days of our development as a nation, it was to the black masses of our people that Headley had the deepest significance. When he walked to the wicket, says Michael Manley in his History of West Indies Cricket, he became the focus for the longing of an entire people for proof to their self-worth, their own capacity. Cricketers like Headley represented the hopes and aspirations of a people struggling for independence, maturity, and self-respect.

When Headley scored his centuries, the people responded, not only with cheers, but with poetry and songs. At a meeting of the Four Paths Community and Cricket Club in 1935, the minutes revealed that in a rural schoolroom and reading only by lamplight, the secretary noted that “out of our meetings and out of our cricket development, we have learned the art of exchanging thoughts and broadening the views of each other in a civilised and respectful manner. It is through this medium that we have been learning to respect each other, and to help to realise the goals of upliftment socially, morally, intellectually, and spiritually, for our club, community and country. Cricket is a mirror of our society. When we begin to win again, you bet our boys will remove their earrings.

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Shivnarine Chanderpaul