2009-08-01

Craziness in cricket

I'm actually speaking about the West Indies cricket team, this time. The Windies just finished getting whitewashed by Bangladesh in both the Test and ODI series, the players association and the Board continue to seem to be at loggerheads and the latest news is that the WICB have selected a preliminary squad for the upcoming Champions Trophy in September that only features one of the players (Fidel Edwards) who was part of the senior men's squad earlier this season.

Clearly the WICB are sticking by their guns and refusing to give the upper-etchelon players like Sarwan, Gayle, Chanderpaul and Bravo a fair shake.

A recent report from Cricinfo contains some interesting commentary from the legendary former captain Clive Lloyd. He's pretty much told off both sets of antagonists for trying to milk the profits for themselves and being stubborn with their demands.

Basically, the biggest losers are fans of the West Indies and fans of cricket in general who wish to support the best players giving it their all and not have to wonder why politics is determining which players don their national colours.

I, as well as a few others, wonder now if this is the beginning of the end of the West Indies as a cricket nation.

Here's a great essay. Not many people in Bermuda know any of the heads of state of a Caribbean country, but they definitely knew about Brian Lara or Viv Richards and probably know Chris Gayle or Shiv Chanderpaul.

August 11. That's the date for elections with the WICB. It will be interesting, the next couple of weeks in the cricket world.

1 comment:

Tryangle said...

And here's some insightful commentary on the fallout from Tony Cozier.

The WICB is in a tremendous spot of bother.