Cricket no longer a gentleman's game

Hartley Neita, Contributor

Up to last week, cricket was the last sport that was played on the basis that winning was not the end-all.

It has been a game, which could boast to the world that it did not matter who won or lost, but how the winners and losers conducted themselves on the field of play and in the pavilion.

The maxim has always been how the game is played. Pride and prestige, however, have erased all that. Ever since we defeated our colonial masters at the hallowed grounds of Lords in London and subsequently ruled the world with Caribbean dash and style we have became so accustomed to winning that the taste of defeat has been too bitter to take.

Worse, too, is to be defeated by South Africa, whose apartheid doctrine made us retch in the recent past. And the thought of being beaten by the present team against which we never played in our years of glory is too bitter a pill to swallow.

Tradition

Now most of our captains of the past were brought up in the tradition that cricket is gentleman's game. Men like Goddard, Alexander, Sobers, Worrell, Lloyd, Richardson, Richards, the captains of 10 years ago and more, equated cricket with the high qualities of social behaviour. "Please" and "thanks" were words in the vocabulary of their cricket.

All that is no more. And based on the behaviour and the time-wasting methods used by Dillon and Ramnarine, it will never be again.

Hear the gospel of Saint Hooper, the man who has been ordained by the West Indies Cricket Board to lead us into the Paradise of victory.

"At the end of the day (of the last Test)," he says, "the most important thing is that West Indies did not lose the match."

According to him, "the fellas legitimately had problems - one with the hamstring and the other with the ankle." He forgot to mention that one, who stopped the bowler in mid-track, seemed also to have had a problem with his eye.

It is then, at this point, we see the measure of the man.

"We have got to do whatever it takes not to lose games and whatever it takes now to try to get a few wins on the board," he declares.

New tactics

To save Mr. Hooper, the coach, the manager, the board and the selectors the trouble of devising new tactics which can be introduced in the future, here are some:

Whenever our batsmen are crowded by fielders they should swing the bat wildly and release it to hit one of the fielders in the face. One down, ten to go.

At the other end, the batsmen should run along the pitch with our opponents' fast bowler as he is about to deliver and trip him with the bat. Two down, nine to go.

Arrange for a spectator to use a mirror to dazzle the eyes of the bowler.

Complain about imaginary flies interfering with the batsman's sight. This can waste time for five minutes while insecticides are brought on the field to flit them away.

And if everything else fails, throw bottles on the field and stop play.

Oh yes, Mr. Hooper, we have to do whatever it takes to win.

P.S.: For picture of the new century, I nominate Delmar's photo in last Tuesday's Gleaner of Dillon standing in his purple drawers and Ramnarine sitting on the grounds of Kensington Oval in Barbados, sans boots and socks as they show their injuries to the umpires and the South Africans.