Rejected

WESTERN BUREAU:

THE CALL from Greg Barclay, who recently ended his tenure as chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), to split the West Indies cricket team into individual territories ,with each competing individually in Test cricket, has been roundly rejected by some stakeholders here in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean.

“It’s a ludicrous statement. I don’t know how he got there, and I can’t see the benefit that it would have to the individual territories,’ said Dr Donovon Bennett, president of the Jamaica Cricket Association, in an interview with The Gleaner.

The West Indies Cricket team, the University of the West Indies, and CARICOM are viewed as major pillars in unifying the Caribbean, and the general view is that dismantling the regional cricket team, which once ruled the world, would be a retrograde step and a threat to the legacy and unity of the region.

In a parting shot as chairman of the ICC, Barclay suggested that the West Indies cricket team, in its current posture, is not viable and not financially sustainable.

“You look at the West Indies. I love what they’ve done for the game, but is the West Indies in its current form sustainable? Is it time for them to break into each of their islands?” said Barclay. “The thing is, can they afford to [continue to play Test cricket]? They barely can make their books balance now.”

“What they’ve achieved in cricket is phenomenal when you think that they are a group of disparate islands that don’t really have anything in common other than cricket, and yet they’ve held themselves together for that period of time as the West Indies,” Bartley added, noting that the West Indies is not allowed to participate in some international tournaments, which calls for individual nations.

“For the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, Barbados turned up as the participants for the region. Is that a little glimpse of what the future looks like? I don’t know,” said Barclay.

However, Bennett, who has more than 40 years of dedicated service to the game, in defending the region’s long-standing structure, said Barclay’s suggestion will not find favour in the region.

SOLID STRUCTURE

“It’s not going to happen. The present Cricket West Indies structure is a very solid one, and there is a lot of unity, albeit the recent behaviour of Guyana and Barbados. It’s a solid unit, and I don’t see any fragmentation in the near to medium future,” said Bennett.

Like Bennett, former Trinidad and Tobago cricketer Andre Lawrence sees Barclay’s suggestion as doing more harm than good.

“You can have an inter-island competition to decide your Olympic representative, but certainly, I don’t see anything but a strong West Indies as the best thing to represent the region on the world stage because really, we don’t have the numbers,” said Lawrence.

“It is only six representative nations that take part in the regional (West Indies domestic) tournaments, and from that, there are 15 players per team on average. That is just 90 players to choose your best players from to represent the region in three formats. If you break that down to individual islands, you simply won’t get the quality of players to choose for the world stage.”

In fact, Bennett believes that if fragmented, with Jamaica and other regional states competing on their own, they would never be able to play in the ICC World Cup and Test cricket.

“We would never play Test cricket and the World Cup as individual nations. That would be almost impossible for that to happen. We would be very hard-pressed to compete in a tournament like that,” said Bennett.

“It is not in our best interest even to begin to consider it. He (Barclay) is totally detached from the realities in the Caribbean.”

Interestingly, Collin Hitchman, the first vice-president of the Westmoreland Cricket Association, speaking in his individual capacity, says he thinks Barclay’s view represents an option worth looking at.

“I think that Jamaica should try and form a team for themselves to enter the international forum. We are not going to be strong in the first five to 15 years, but we can develop in the same way we produce football teams that have made it to the World Cup,” said Hitchman.

“The infrastructure, in terms of institutional thinking, is already there, and we would not be starting from scratch should we go that route.”

However, Barry Watson, the president of the Manchester Cricket Association, agrees with the JCA president that it would not be a good idea, citing infrastructure and finance as big challenges.

“I don’t think that if we try to go solo, we could manage. Yes, the suggestion is a possibility for us to get into ICC tournaments, but in terms of Jamaica getting in as a team (Test cricket), I don’t figure we are ready for that right now,” said Watson.