A bleak week for sport starting with the Windies cutting short their India tour and scampering off home because of a feud with their Cricket Board. I am all for fighting for your rights and hooray for you that you won’t accept a pay cut but this was shabby and what is most surprising is that all 15 players got on the same page and staged their walk out. This ‘togetherness’ only leads one to believe that they had planned exercising a drastic option all along especially when you consider that this impasse was in place when they left. This standoff has been there for years. If it was unresolved then why catch the flight to India? And why display such disrespect to the game, the host nation and fans in both countries and around the world?

Ever since Chris Gayle’s threat to leave the team in 2011 the conflict between the WICB and WIPA has been a tedious ongoing affair. But on this occasion the team as a sports entity is in trouble and the BCCI has flexed muscle and made its move swiftly. By suspending all cricketing ties with the Windies it has put the WICB on notice. This pressure will put into jeopardy the fixtures for the Caribbean players against South Africa and New Zealand since severe guarantees will be demanded. However, the BCCI has cleverly not hurt its coffers in allowing West Indian players to take part in the IPL next year. Seeing as how they are the ones who walked out you’d think they would also be placed under a suspension from tournaments held in India. Clearly not. That is a clear indication that the BCCI has been propelled by financial pragmatism rather than any sense of fairness, so the righteous indignation rings a bit hollow. But legal proceedings could create a whole new dimension and break the back of the WICB who cannot take on the Indian Board.

The Indian Board lost $65 million and that is not chump change. Guess it thought no sense in losing more so it targeted the WICB and not the players. What is most intriguing is that West Indian players in India for nearly two months make a lot of money besides enjoying one heck of an ego trip and are loath to leave. They are lionized, the off days are party central, they have security that would make a rap artist like Kanye West envious and every venue would have at least 10,000 individuals who’d pay just to be photographed with these guys not to mention giddy groupies who hound them wherever they go.

These players can charge large sums for inaugurating shops, patronizing restaurants and hotels and even attending private functions in their honor besides winning a slew of ad endorsements which come their way. For them, in this cricket crazy land, it is VIP celeb treatment all the way and they lap it up. They get nowhere near that ‘high’ in their own country. In India they get mobbed. So it has to be something more insidious going on here and the truth will out. Where cricket is concerned you don’t walk away from India, it is just not smart.

The Windies could have just as easily played out the tour under official protest then gone home and refused to budge until the contracts were made mutually acceptable. Truth be told between Wavell Hinds, Dinanath Ramnarine and Dave Cameron they have muddied the waters so much even they don’t know what is going on. It is like a bunch of kids snitching on each other in school and most unedifying. It all began when Hinds sent Dwayne Bravo an e-mail and the rest is sordid history…