The last amateurs

As the world of sports and the entertainment industry become more intertwined and reshaped by television’s advertising dollar, the salaries of sportsmen and sportswomen, management and coaches have escalated into the stratosphere. Naturally, the higher the compensation, the higher the expectations of silverware at season’s end. Failure to deliver, inevitably results in the loss of jobs.

The pressures on managers in the top European soccer leagues are extremely intense. Arsene Wenger, who managed Arsenal in the English Premier League (EPL) from 1996 to 2018, where he was the most successful and longest serving manager in the club’s history, likened it “to living on a volcano; any day may be your last.” Likewise, the high-profile American football coaches on the college circuit and in the professional National Football League (NFL) endure the same demands; produce or perish.

Most of the European Leagues kicked off in late August, around the same time as the American college football season, whilst the NFL commenced in September. The American sport has hit the halfway mark; the European game continues until next May, in most instances. Slow starts, losing streaks or unsatisfactory performances by some teams, have evoked memories of the famous quote by the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, “Off with their heads”.

Last weekend, Manchester United, following a 4 – 1 walloping by 16th place Watford, their fourth loss in five matches, fired their manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. He is the sixth casualty among EPL managers for this season, so far, joining the queue comprising the former heads of Watford, Newcastle, Tottenham, Norwich City and Aston Villa, who were let go between the first weeks of October and November. In Spain’s La Liga, three former managers, including Barcelona’s, are job hunting, while four managers in Italy’s Serie A were given the chop. Fourteen American football college coaches were sacked, while only one was given the boot in the NFL. At the top of the professional sporting world, losing in the short term is not tolerated by owners, and, or upper management. Changes take place swiftly.

Here in the West Indies, losing is viewed through an entirely different prism. It appears we have drifted back in time to the nineteenth century amateur era, where it was not important whether you won or lost, but rather how you played the game. Following the most dismal performance ever by a West Indies team, in the

just concluded 2021 T20 World Cup, President of Cricket West Indies (CWI), Ricky Skerritt expressed the following sentiments in a virtual media conference last Wednesday: “I was here myself to see the last two games and then as a guest of the ICC, I was here to see the semi-finals and finals. So I’ve gotten a fairly good first-hand view of what was taking place in terms of our performance, which was disappointing, to be frank, but what will not happen….is any knee-jerk, angerbased, emotional decision about cricket, certainly not while I’m president.”

Whilst one was pondering the logic in this rather political sounding statement, the CWI President added, “We have to be in a learning environment. If we lose, it must be of benefit to us because we are learning. If we don’t create a learning environment in West Indies cricket, we will not improve in anything we do.”

Earlier, Skerritt had announced that the team’s performance was under review, by whom he did not disclose, and that he was expecting “to see some reports in the not-too-distant future.”

Where does one begin to make any sense of all this rhetoric? This is just plain beating around the bush, which just insults the basic intelligence of all West Indies cricket fans. Perhaps, President Skerritt needs to be reminded of the promises he made when he canvassed for the post to which he was elected in March 2019. Skerritt, the campaigner, had stressed the need for greater transparency and commitment, and promised that his stewardship would bring about the governance and performance principles necessary to push West Indies cricket forward. Transparency. Commitment. Performance principles. Just more political campaign promises gone awry?

Well here we are again, two and a half years later, back to the familiar cycle of reports on the obvious being prepared for no further action to be taken. This report, ‘The 2021 T20 World Cup Inquest’ - yes the death knell for West Indies cricket was just sounded here - will join the likes of the never adopted Patterson and Barriteau reports on display in the cricket archives section in the library of the University of West Indies at the Cave Hill Campus in Barbados.

The CWI President acknowledged that he had witnessed first-hand the “disappointing” display, and yet can sit there and tell us that there will be no “knee-jerk anger based” decisions? Learning environment? Fine. So, if the T20 World Cup was viewed as a learning situation why weren’t the promising youngsters blooded instead of it being an excursion for the over-the-hill gang? The CWI board should put on their tweed jackets and retire to the smoking room of their old boys club where they exchange pleasantries over scotch and cigars in their never changing world of delusion.

The year 2022 beckons and West Indies cricket fans are already contemplating their New Year resolutions. They have had enough of the last amateurs trying to compete in a modern, professional world and not being held accountable for their performance (or lack thereof) on the field. Enough is enough.