WEST INDIES CRICKET The calypso ends CRICKET “remains the instrument of Caribbean cohesion,” wrote Clive Lloyd, a former West Indies cricket captain, without exaggeration. After the short-lived dream of the West Indies Federation, which united the former British islands of the Caribbean in 1958-62, little more than the pre-existing regional cricket team survived—but what a team it was. In their pomp, from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, the mostly poor, black islanders, from Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua and elsewhere, were almost unbeatable in a game that had previously been dominated by middle-class white men. They transformed the world’s second most popular game after football, making it faster and more glamorous; at a time when South Africa was riven by apartheid and India’s cricketers could scarcely manage to win a game, they were an inspiration to non-white sportsmen all around the world. The West Indies was the greatest union of sporting nations in history; yet on October 17th the latest of many recent crises put its future in jeopardy. On a tour of India the West Indian team went on strike in a pay dispute with their administrators. The tour was cancelled; India’s cricket board says it will sue, for perhaps $65m in lost television revenues. That would bankrupt the West Indies. Or if the Indians desist, they are unlikely to schedule a rematch, which would have the same effect. As support for cricket has faded in the Caribbean, owing to the game’s mismanagement, the West Indies has become dependent on Indian largesse. That makes the timing of the cricketers’ strike especially depressing. It suggests that, even if they had a real grievance, they were content to do maximum damage to their own cricketing set-up. If so, India’s aggrieved cricket bosses are also to blame, having long tempted the West Indian players to forsake international cricket for a lucrative Indian domestic tournament, the Indian Premier League. Thereby, they may have hastened the death of a once-great sporting tradition. A scandal in the West Indian cricket team augurs the end of a great tradition. Oct 25th 2014 | From the print edition.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 12:12:03 +0000
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