BOMBAY, 18 April 2003 — As you read this the first Test between West Indies and Australia may well have ended or is at a deciding stage. Carl Hooper has become the latest victim of the World Cup failure syndrome and has been replaced by Brian Lara. The left-handed batting champion has accepted the post saying that it would have been dereliction of his duty to West Indian cricket if he had not done so. It might look hard on Hooper who seemed to have done a good holding operation with the limited resources he had at his disposal and the general paucity of talent in the Caribbean islands. Now Hooper has ruled himself out of playing altogether after the way he was asked to furnish a fitness certificate even after having scored a century in the inter-island matches. If that wasn’t proof of his fitness then what more did the West Indies board want? That there is politics in West Indies cricket could be seen by the way five board delegates abstained from voting when presented with the selection choice of Brian Lara as the captain. Lara won the vote 5-4 with the five abstentions, as mentioned earlier and the fact that for such an important subject as the captaincy of the West Indies cricket team, there were so many who wouldn’t vote indicates the kind of politics that is prevalent there.
Mind you, there is politics in every sphere of human activity though the degree of it might differ but to think that it is prevalent only in a few spheres is totally wrong. It is interesting to see that the choice of the captaincy of the national cricket team by the selectors has to be ratified by the boards. It was the same when the South African selectors chose.
Graeme Smith to replace Shaun Pollock but could not announce it as the South African board had to approve it. In India it is the president of the board who ratifies the choice of the captain. It’s not yet known whether any board has refused the selection choice of a captain, but it does beg the question that, if a ratification is required then why have a committee at all?
The first West Indies-Australia Test will see Steve Waugh becoming the most capped Test player passing Allan Border who played 156 Tests virtually without a break. Border hasn’t quite got the credit for the way he turned Australian cricketing fortunes in the late 1980s. It was his pugnacious batting and ‘never give up till the last ball’ attitude that gave the Australians that dogged determined approach which is now paying them such rich dividends. As the team started to win and the players began to believe in themselves the Australians got stronger and stronger and now are virtually unbeatable.
The West Indies were in a similar way only a few years back, in fact till the last Australian tour there in 1999, but have not been the same since that series. Lara was the captain then and though he batted superbly in that series he wasn’t quite able to take his team to a win. He will no doubt be hoping that with Warne not there and McGrath returning perhaps for the last two Tests only, the West Indies have a chance to turn the tables on the World Champions.
For the Australians, a series win will almost certainly see them regain their status as the ICC Test Champions but the fact that South Africa who had only last year lost five out of the six Tests that they played against the Aussies, are the Test champions shows that the ICC rankings does need to be revalued.
West Indies are also playing the first Test without Chris Gayle who was left out of the team since he did not play in West Indies domestic cricket and opted to rest after the World Cup. How he would be wishing he was an Indian for if the same criteria were to be applied by the Indian board then India would be fielding a brand new team since none of their ‘stars’ condescend to play in the domestic game and invariably come up with mysterious injuries backed by a convenient medical certificate. These ‘injuries’ clear up equally mysteriously as soon as there is an international and yes, there is a medical certificate to prove that the player is now fit as a fiddle. Gayle did participate in a double-wicket tournament and did well too so there was no question about his fitness, but it is obviously a case of lack of communication between the player and the administration which in the modern day of wireless technology and laptops seems hard to excuse. Why is it so difficult for an official to pick up a phone and connect with a player is really hard to understand. Ego is probably the answer, but it does lead to acrimony which is avoidable by the simple act of making a connection.
It is not just a problem with the administrators but also with players who too are guilty of not making the effort to connect and resolve a problem or even nip it in the bud and when one says ‘players’, it includes former players too.
This can be seen by the happenings in the last couple of weeks where former players who have become administrators have not communicated enough. When the news about the BCCI not releasing the payment of the players was out in the media, there was nobody at the recently formed Indian Cricket Players’ Association to state what the actual position was and what its stance was in the matter. Then, on an even more serious note the players’ representative to the ICC Cricket Committee (Playing) meeting was not known till the eleventh hour and that too it wasn’t the players or their association who took the decision, but the BCCI president.
