Tony Becca
WHEN I was a boy growing up in Seaforth, St. Thomas, and later
in Allman Town, Kingston, my father used to tell me, "son, always respect another man's opinion", and that is the way I have lived my life.
My father, however, never told me to accept another man's opinion if I did not agree with it, and I am happy he did not attempt to tell me to do that - for the simple reason that I could not have done so and cannot now
do so.
The West Indies Cricket Board has decided to postpone the semi-finals and the final of the Carib Beer Series set for February 10 to 13 and for February 17 to 21, to April 7 to 10 and April 14 to 18, and while I respect its authority to do so, while I can understand why it has done so, I cannot agree with it.
According to the board, the request for the postponement came from Trinidad and Tobago - one of the four teams in the semi-finals.
The reasons for the request are that the West Indies team will be away in New Zealand at that time, that the teams involved would prefer to have their Test players available, and apart from the fact that that is not so, that based on the words of their coach, Henderson Springer, Barbados, one of the four teams in the semi-finals, certainly do not agree with the request, the board should not even have thought about it much more accept it.
WEAK AND INCOMPETENT
By accepting the request, the board has exposed itself as being weak, incompetent, and, as many already believe, not worthy of leading West Indies cricket.
By accepting the request for another change in a competition that has already seen so many changes, the board has made a mockery of the competition.
For those who do not remember, the competition has already seen many changes.
Scheduled to involve return matches which would have seen each team playing 10 matches and to start on November 11, the competition was cut to one round of five matches each and did not get under way until November 25 - two weeks after the original starting date.
On top of that, apart from other changes to the original schedule, apart from the folly, the unprecedented and dangerous move of postponing one round of matches due to rain prior to the start of the match - the round involving Guyana versus the Windward Islands and Barbados against Trinidad which is now being played - the dates for the semi-finals and the finals had already been changed on two occasions.
ANOTHER HUGE GAP
Remembering that there was a month's gap between the third round and the fourth round of the competition, this new change means that there will be another huge gap - two months this time - between the final round of the preliminaries and the semi-finals and regardless what it means to the sponsors, that cannot be in the best interest of West Indies cricket.
It is good, obviously, that the best players from each of the four teams will be available for the semi-finals and the final, and it would be good for Trinidad and Tobago, who, after failing to win a four-day title since 1985, would like to win the Challenge Shield, if Brian Lara, Daren Ganga, Dwayne Bravo and Denesh Ramdin - their leading players, were in their line-up.
After all the changes, however, after postponing a round because of rain despite its rules that cater for matches abandoned due to rain, after leaving themselves wide open to Jamaica or the Leeward Islands who were idle that round, calling for a similar favour if one of their later matches was threatened by rain and they ran the risk of walking away with only the four points allocated for an abandoned match, and after doing the Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands no favour when their match was abandoned without a ball being bowled, without the toss even being spun, to postpone the semi-finals and the final because of the request of one team, in fact for any reason but a regional disaster, has once again demonstrated the weakness, the incompetence, of which so many have accused the board in recent times.
When, for the third time, the board had set the dates for the semi-finals and the final of their top competition, it certainly knew the dates of the West Indies tour to New Zealand. It certainly knew that the Test players would not have been available, and based on the reasons it has given for once again changing the dates, it must have known at that time that by being involved the best players would have raised the standard and profile of the competition. It also knew that by being involved they would be getting match practice for the home series against India, and that by being involved they would have an impact on the gate and thus improve the board's cash flow.
To change again, and remembering that the more it changes its schedule the more it affects the planning of the territorial boards re their own domestic competitions, suggests that on top of everything else, the board is blinkered - either that or, despite the fact that it is they who, through the clubs, produce West Indies players, it has no respect for its affiliates, for club cricket, for those who play the game at the club level, and for those who sponsor the game at the club level.
