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Crocodile tears being shed over West Indies
The absence of the West Indies in this World Cup is not a reason for nostalgia or reminiscence. It should in fact become a worldwide alert. Here's why…
When the World Cup began with its commentary coming off TV, Trinidadian cricket historian-writer Vaneisa Baksh working at her desk heard the commentator say, “Jason Holder.” Her instinctive twitch was to look up “hopefully” at hearing the name “as if he were on the field…” Then she said, “I remembered. My brain was playing tricks on me.”
Watching India’s noisy march from a distance with no West Indies to contend, Baksh feels, “Pain and shame and anger.” She adds, “It is and was a big blow… For me, it was a marker, the final nail that signified the break between the past, the present and the future.” It has felt “surreal.”
Former two-time world champion fast bowler Michael Holding has been retired from commentary for over two years and has not followed the World Cup and says,“ it’s sad the West Indies is not there. That is just unanimously felt in the Caribbean.”
Speaking to the Hindustan Times, he says there are “a lot of crocodile tears being shed over West Indies cricket” in the world. It was known, Holding says, that the West Indies was “going to get to this stage the way things are moving.” But when the first signs of difficulty arrived for such a unique and storied team, the global community led by ICC’s policies and boardroom politics did nothing to address the issues that arose from a changing cricket economy.
Holding says, “because the West Indies was so successful for so long… they are happy to see us where we are.” He ignores the lamentation around the West Indies’ absence from the World Cup as he seen very different behaviours around his team. The West Indies was the first full member nation to run aground due to the ICC’s new financial models. Today, after the Big Three’s revenue-share grab of ICC’s earnings, all smaller nations feel the full impact down the line. West Indies cricket today is like a warning sign for every other smaller team’s tomorrow.
Holding believes that the first “dagger in the back” for the West Indies – came with the ICC’s re-structuring of the financial arrangements between cricket boards. In the years before ICC’s first major media rights deal ($550m in 2000), cricket boards negotiated between themselves for fees to be paid per match / format to touring teams. The West Indies were at centre of lucrative fee arrangements visiting England and Australia as they were at the time, Holding called them, “a valuable team, which would attract audience, TV coverage and sponsors.” The West Indies’ couldn’t pay the same fee for a reciprocal tour, Holding says, “because they haven’t got the TV audience or live audience or sponsorship in the region” but their team had stayed in demand due to the quality of their cricket.
In 2000, the ICC did away with bilateral arrangements and offered a flat fee in order to create an evenly-distributed Future Tours Programme where every team played each other over a period in order to give newer Test nations like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh a chance to compete with the world. It was to trim the West Indies annual earnings[1], Tony Cozier calling it a ‘snorter’ from the ICC.
Holding tried to explain the West Indies’ flat-fee dilemma to the ICC’s Cricket Committee of which he was a member. He says he explained, “why the new structure it would not help West Indies Cricket – small population, lack of TV revenue, lack of sponsorship.” He was met with a response from ICC’s then-general manager David Richardson, “He says to me, ‘whose fault is that?” And so I knew right then that they cared nothing about West Indies cricket.” As for the rest of the cricket committee, “It was not like people were speaking up saying yeah, ‘I support what Mikey is saying.’ It was basically silence.” He says, “It is why I no longer care about the ICC and whatever cricket they put out.”
The second ‘stab to West Indies’ back’ in Holding’s opinion was the advent of T20 franchise cricket for which he does not blame the West Indian cricketers for choosing club over country. “The West Indies board have no money and can’t afford to pay their players what other boards can – I’m not throwing fault at the players, I would do the same thing.”
With the advent of cricket at the LA2028 Olympics, one of the solutions being offered is that the West Indies compete as separate nations. Holding says, “it is absolutely ridiculous to have that idea anywhere close to your mind.” If the West Indies break up into individual islands, “that means immediately Test cricket is over.” No island could put forward a Test team “to be competitive with anybody, so forget Test cricket if you are going to break it up.” The T20 solution may work in at Olympic and Commonwealth Games level “because T20 is luck, a lot of luck comes into play - but think about it. Jamaica on its own cannot have a tour… so are we going to play one game and forget it and move on? Where’s the TV revenue going to come from? Who is going to buy TV rights for Jamaica playing whoever alone in a T20 series?” Holding goes on, “what about Antigua – 120000 people – you are going to have a T20 series in Antigua? In Dominica? It is absolutely ridiculous.” The West Indies he says has to exist as a single collective entity for international cricket itself to survive in the Caribbean.
“You hear a lot of talk, oh, we need a strong West Indies, but what have they (ICC) done to change the situation. Pure talk does nothing.” Under the current administrative and financial model at the ICC, Holding believes there is “no way” West Indies cricket is going to “survive or get back to what it should be.”
The revenue-share grab of the Big Three nations – BCCI, ECB and Cricket Australia – has led to a situation where Holding says, “the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and it will continue in that direction because the rich are greedy and nobody is there (in the ICC) to control them.” Smaller countries will go with the Big Three, “otherwise they won’t give me a tour or this or that – the Big Three have all the power to do what they like.” Holding says the ICC in any case is “run all the while by one of those three nations” regardless of who is chairman. As the custodians of cricket, “the ICC has to make sure that all the constituents are healthy. But they don’t do that.”
Holding not predicting the death of nation v nation cricket but instead, an increasing irrelevance. “You will still have the Ashes as it’s tradition. With India getting richer and more powerful, people will always want to play against India, so Test cricket won’t die. It will still go on but a lot of it will become insignificant.”
The absence of the West Indies in this World Cup is not a reason for nostalgia or reminiscence. It should in fact become a worldwide alert for the shrinking of a sport that nurses grandiose dreams of going global.
