This piece was first penned on December 3rd, 2010. With the West Indies Cricket Team suffering another humiliating Test loss, this time to the New Zealanders at Sabina Park, I renew my call for the West Indies to stop fielding a cricket team.
TIME TO STOP… just stop please!
A Jamaican would say, “me ah beg the I dem do stop!” In Trinidad one would be likely to hear, “oh gorm bwoy stop nuh!” In Grenada, “all how ah talk to the boy he doh stoppin”.
In whatever accent, in whichever Caribbean Territory, I think the time has come to make a concerted and passionate appeal to whoever is responsible, to quit assembling a cricket team to represent the people of the region.
Firstly, we as a people deserve much, much better and if the players would remove their designer sunglasses and dazzling diamond earrings for just a minute, they might be able to see the intricate link between social life in the Caribbean and the success of our sporting teams, especially our once dominant cricket team.
There is no more need for assessments or the erecting of cricketing centers of excellence or whatever other attempts there might be to re-capture the days of old. We can revel in the past, and be contented that this tiny, geographically disjointed region of 6 million once produced cricket teams that dominated the world.
While the under-achievers who now masquerade as players have to account for a lot of the on-field ineptitude, the bulk of the blame off the field is directly attributable to an ineffective bunch of so-called executives.
In recent times we have hired an Australian to teach West Indians how to play the game of cricket; closed the academy in Grenada; lay our hopes for the future at the door steps (make that a jail door) of a now imprisoned con-man and not been able to adequately prepare a field for a test match!
As a proud West Indian, I can’t handle this stress and the embarrassment any longer.
Instead I now enjoy the exploits of our track and field athletes as they continue to dominate internationally, bringing true Caribbean spirit with them, dancing past fellow competitors, dominating with certainty the way Sir Viv, the 3 Ws, Roberts, Marshall and Lloyd did.
So I am pleading with the pertinent authorities to please put the Caribbean out of our collective misery and just stop! Tell the ICC we are interested no more and if they doubt our seriousness we can provide them with irrefutable evidence: tapes of the performance of West Indies team over the past ten years!
Our now useless cricket stadia will convert nicely into premier track and field arenas and attract world-class athletes to train and compete in this part of the world which affords superior hospitality and excellent weather conditions.
I further propose a region-wide day of mourning for the game of cricket as we once knew it. All over the Caribbean, radio stations will blast cricket-related calypsos and television stations will show highlights of past glory. For that day we will all wear black, reminisce and argue about whether Lara was more dominant on any given day than Richards or if Wes Hall could have dismissed either Haynes or Greenidge. And at the end of the day of mourning we will erase anything that could even slightly remind us of all that we have lost and what cricket has been like in the region for the last 15 years or so.
While my proposal may initially sound harsh and painful even, there comes a time when one has to make the tough decisions with the knowledge that the hurt now will pale in comparison to what lies ahead. So before we begin to be dominated by the likes of Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Ireland, let us bow out gracefully, respectfully and with whatever remaining shred of dignity we can muster.
We had a wonderful run and have established some great traditions, a truth lost on the present-day grouping of misfits with their I-pods, I-phones and ‘I am God’s gift to the game’ attitude.
To Cricket we say thank you for affording us the opportunity to scale the heights of your summit and be world-beaters. We say thank you for providing a collective sense of hope, identity and belonging to a people so diverse. Thank you Cricket for the memories; our only regret is that we didn’t quit 15 years ago.
Dexter Mitchell
madeingrenada 