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| Ramnaresh Sarwan |
The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) drama continues to befuddle. Most recently its St. Lucian head, Dr. Julian Hunte and its St. Lucian CEO, Ernest Hilaire, ‘fired’ a number of players and hired a new Captain: A St. Lucian, Darren Sammy. The ‘fired’ players included its current captain and vice captain, Chris Gayle, and Dwayne Bravo, and former captain and vice captain, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dinesh Ramdin. These players all held central contracts with the WICB up until these new developments. There were other players fired but these four happened to be the more experienced players on the team. The WICB offered a number of reasons for these moves. The most befuddling was Sarwan’s firing. The WICB gave his lack of fitness as the reason. I used the word ‘fired’ to describe these actions because its important we understand this is an employer/employee relationship between the WICB and the players. Gayle and Bravo declined their offers ostensibly to pursue more lucrative opportunities with which the WICB schedule would conflict. The WICB responded by relieving them of their Captain and Vice Captain roles. Dinesh Ramdin and Ramnaresh Sarwan received no contract offers from the WICB and were not selected for the upcoming tour to Sri Lanka. Gayle and Bravo, despite no central contracts, were selected for the upcoming tour of Sri Lanka. All four have one thing in common: prior union activity. They may now be classified as independent contractors. As I describe, they are not independent at all, they are chained to a system which they played no part in its creation: a system which forces befuddling decisions because it operates in the interest of forces far from the Caribbean. The present construction of the WICB will continue to befuddle with these kinds of decisions because of its peculiar history, its failure to correctly interpret that history, and its ever-present benefactor, Digicel. To understand and bring clarity to these startling developments we must look at that very history.
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| Sir Frank Worrell |
The WICB’s history is rooted in its name. The countries regarded as the West Indies were never the ‘West Indies’. Some may recall from high school history that Christopher Columbus went in search of the riches of the East Indies and, instead, found an entire continent in his path. Forming a broken handle ‘connected’ to this ‘new’ landmass was an archipelago of islands now referred to as the Caribbean. The English speaking islands along with British Guiana would form the nucleus from which players were drawn to form the team we know and love as the ‘West Indies’. Columbus’ accident led to a series of events that began with the subjugation and extermination of the Taino people found on these islands, the enslavement and indenture of people from Africa, India, Europe, and China and the expansion and consolidation of Britain’s power over the ‘West Indies’. Cricket and the WICB grew out of this construct and the inequality endemic in that construct continues today and, in my view, explains the befuddling actions of the current WICB.
Organized cricket in the region began as a private men’s club in which only White men were allowed. White Women were associate members in those clubs. They played tennis or netball, but not cricket. In 2005, the women’s cricket body, WIWCF, became part of the WICB and only by mandate of the International Cricket Council (ICC). Slowly, as the ‘West Indies’ began to transform and be transformed as the financial genesis of Europe’s industrial revolution, the popularity of the game grew and the laborers of these lands began to participate in the game. The WICB formed in 1920. It was not until 1948 the West Indies had its first captain of African descent, George Headley, and only for a short period and as a token in one game, despite being the best batsman forever. It was another decade before the next black captain, Sir Frank Worrell in 1960. It was many more years later before a captain of obvious Indian descent. Historians credit Worrell with fathering the modern West Indies style and approach to the game. Unknown to many, and I believe including the current WICB, Worrell lead several player revolts against the then West Indies Cricket Board of Control. They dropped the ‘of Control’ in 1996. Worrell refused to tour India over salary on one occasion[i]. The WICB reveres Worrell today, but vilifies the attempts of current employees to demand a better wage. Instead, words like greedy and unpatriotic are used by the employer and its media to describe current players who dare to show dissent and more recently added firings and demotions for scurrilous reasons in an attempt to dominate in the way plantation owners did to own everything of their workers. But this can only occur where the WICB lacks the understanding of its own historical genesis and with the help of an international construct that fosters the exploitation of the individual and any rights assigned.
No group of countries got together to form the WICB and West Indies cricket. The reverse is true. It was the West Indies Cricket Board of Control that got together with its All-European clubs of the various islands and British Guiana to form the WICB. The Georgetown Cricket Club, even the Demerara Cricket Club, Queen’s Park Cricket Club, Kingston Cricket Club were ‘European-only’ or near-European clubs when the WICB formed: less than a hundred years ago. It was this segregated, by race class and sex, patriarchy that formed the WICB ‘C’. Of course it was financed by the largesse of free and near free labor. So, it was in this mire of myopia that the relationship among the WICB, the governments of the region and the people of the region formed. Not much is known about labor relations between the WICB and its players during the All-White days. But we know that Worrell sought to transform that relationship. Clive Lloyd, the next most notable captain, also sought to transform this labor/management relationship and defected to Kerry Packer when offered a more lucrative deal. Kerry Packer was the IPL and Stanford of that era. A misguided few even went to play in apartheid South Africa. Yet, this is often lost in the discussion of Gayle, Sarwan and company. While ‘rich’ men like Kerry Packer and Richard Stanford saw the economic opportunity of West Indies Cricket, the WICB remain stunted by its history and desire to control.
Whatever goodwill created by the West Indies teams under Worrell, Lloyd and others has now been squandered by an organization run without any input from the people of the region. On the contrary, it is still run by people outside the region. It is a corporation, but a special corporation because no regional government can challenge it. As a legal construct, the WICB is run by the International Cricket Council (ICC) another slow to change bureaucracy still racked by the very same history from which the WICB grew. A recent example of how this works is the suspension of Nigeria by FIFA the soccer equivalent of the ICC.[ii] Imagine, A sovereign state suspends its players and national team, for whatever the reason, and a body based in Europe suspends the sovereign state as punishment for its interference in its ‘own’ team and that suspension would apply even to games played within that state. That suspension has to be honored by all other states or be itself subject to suspension.
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| Gayle and Bravo (L to R) |
The ICC has further determined through its satellite the WICB that should players like Gayle and Bravo wish to speculate on the open market with their world acknowledged talents, nourished and cheered by Caribbean people, they would have to seek permission from the WICB. By extension they would have to seek permission from the ICC, sitting in Europe, to offer their services in the ‘free’ market. This paternalism sounds too familiar. You may know that the reason offered, by those who purport to know, for Gayle and Bravo’s actions, is to keep their options open and play for the more lucrative Indian Professional League (IPL) or whichever team wants them. But the IPL also needs the ICC approval to stage any cricket tournament. The ICC recently reiterated this point. It stated through its satellite, the WICB, that the BCCI/IPL will send all agreements to the WICB and the WICB will bear sole responsibility for issuing these to the players for their review and acceptance or otherwise. The BCCI/IPL will not have any communication with player agents or managers and will only deal directly with the national boards/associations. The WICB added that if players failed to adhere to these instructions, their names would be withdrawn from the IPL auction register. So players are effectively barred from exercising a very personal attribute: their athletic ability. WIPA and its related organizations are effectively barred from doing its job. We are in a time, as time immemorial, when the Caribbean provides the brawn and the product but the real benefits accrue to interests based elsewhere and dissent is met with swift economic death. Soccer star, Wayne Rooney recently expressed a desire to leave Manchester United FC. There was public outcry. He changed his mind. But FIFA could not stop him from leaving. He is still able to play for England when needed. This is all Gayle, Bravo and Sarwan want. But there is a more insidious player calling the shots: more insidious than the ICC.
As an economic construct, the WICB is run in much the same way as the plantation was run at the formation of the WICB in 1920: from abroad. Its current benefactor is Digicel a British based multinational communications company to whom the WICB sold/contracted its sponsorship rights without any bidding or input from the governments and people of the region. Digicel was the only bidder and, therefore, the lowest bidder. The WICB’s prior benefactor, Cable and Wireless, another foreign multinational communications company was excluded from the process because of some alleged misunderstanding, daring to bargain, even though their bid would have been higher. Any critique of this transaction and subsequent labor disputes always excludes Digicel from the analysis. This is because Digicel is the largest private advertiser in the region, by number of countries, and without whose dollars many media houses would close. Production houses across the Caribbean rely on Digicel for its survival. Its is sufficient to note the situation as it is, where prominent sports writers and social commentators make no effort to analyze the current impasse, but instead attack the players. Many of you would probably do the same thing if Digicel paid for your assignments. Often we see sports reports written by journalists who openly state that Digicel sponsored their trip. The reader may think they are getting an unbiased analysis. But this is far from the truth. The voices of the people and players are tempered by an institution based outside of Caribbean shores whose purpose has nothing to do with the development of the sport. If it was, then they are doing a poor job. There is no need to rehash recent performances of the WI team and the recently concluded regional one-day tournament where teams struggled to reach 150 runs.
If you doubt Digicel’s power just recall the Stanford 20/20 in 2008 when the WICB agreed to sanction the tournament and to invite an England team for a multi million-dollar playoff. Digicel filed an injunction and went to arbitration to stop the tournament and won. The parties agreed on a compromise but it was clear whom the WICB answers to and to whom they had sold the players rights: Digicel. Now here is a contract that was signed between Stanford and the WICB in the Caribbean and Digicel objected because it breached an agreement they signed with the WICB in the Caribbean. Yet the arbitration was held in Europe: in the event you never understood where the power in Caribbean cricket stood
So it’s in this battle for control of rights that colors the dispute between WICB and the players. By opting not to sign central contracts the story goes, Bravo and Gayle hope to retain their rights and instead make themselves available to all bidders: an opportunity they would give up if they signed-on with the WICB, because the WICB signed away those rights to Digicel. Sarwan has been one of the more active, if not vocal, advocates for players’ rights and recently challenged his local Guyana Cricket Board on the agreements they made with the recently completed Airtel Champions League tournament. This activism has lead to him not being offered a contract and being selected. I was in South Africa recently and observed Sarwan and he appeared fitter that he has been in years. Not since the first Stanford Tournament in 2006, where Sarwan was uncharacteristically diving for balls on the boundary, has Sarwan been as fit as he was in South Africa. Fans may recall that Sarwan’s debut in test cricket saw him a feared fielder in the cover position. He even displaced Chanderpaul at that position. In South Africa he showed he was capable. If what’s happening is still unclear, note the recent reshuffling of the West Indies Player Association (WIPA) executive. Sarwan has been appointed as its secretary. All the named fired or demoted players Sarwan, Gayle, Bravo and Ramdin have been closely associated with WIPA and have served in various capacities with the union and been in the forefront of recent strikes. On the other hand, new captain, Darren Sammy, has been very compliant and remained loyal to mangement by refusing to strike. The latest actions by the WICB is an attempt to curtail the growing power of the union and to send a message to the new and inexperienced players in the fold
Many call for some explanation to the Caribbean people. This is primarily because people are unaware that the WICB is a private organization over which no people or country has any jurisdiction. They answer to the ICC: another private club. But Digicel controls them, the WICB, and their decisions are guided by the economic interest of Digicel. This is true for the selectors and this is true for the mainstream press who are supposed to be critiquing these wrongs. The players fully understand this and show their displeasure by striking or sometimes covering the logo on their uniforms. Other incidents of protest go unreported. I have seen the players playing with covered logos and commentators ignore the issue or pay dismissive attention. As a result they, commentators, continually misread these overt signs. Instead the support for corporate interest is so complete, veteran journalist Tony Cozier wrote about the WICB in a 2008 Stabroek News article that, “It is no wonder that there is a body of opinion that, if this dysfunctional organisation can’t get itself into order, the whole thing should be turned over to Stanford and Digicel to run and let’s be done with it.”[iii] I do not know where Mr. Cozier would have found such a body of opinion, perhaps from the only two bodies named in the statement. One has since collapsed under its own weight. I have no quarrel with the abolition of the WICB, but Stanford and Digicel? Ask any Caribbean citizen with Digicel phone service. If you don’t have credit, you can’t talk. And the promise of free weekends might turn out to be a ‘free’ lifetime for Sarwan and company.
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