Adjusted from its usage in golf, the concept of “Pro-Am cricket”, best describes the final between the Jaguars of Guyana and the Red Force of Trinidad and Tobago in the Super50 series. The latter a team of experienced, determined and organized professionals against a largely amateur group of players outmatched, out played, out-thought, out-captained: at one point a few captains emerged for the Jaguars, neither one seemingly capable of knowing what to do.
Only a handicap, usually imposed on professional golf players in team pro-am tournaments when up against the amateurs, could have brought into some measure of equilibrium the yawning gap between the Red Force and the Jaguars.
Unfortunately for the Jaguars, those equalizing handicaps used in golf are not imposed in cricket. To use the colourful Creole phrase it was “Manos Manos” at Coolidge and blood of the Jaguars was left on the field.
Poor Romario, he did not know where to turn as his captain kept tossing him the ball for the next over and the Red Force batsmen took turns in bouncing his deliveries off the stand.
That divide between the professional and amateur cricketers of the Jaguars and the Red Force is representative of the state of cricket in the West Indies.
The reality of today compares to the 1970s-1980s period when our distinguished scribe, Tony Cozier, noted that with our greatest talents missing the regional tournament to play for county and state teams in England and Australia, our locally-bound players missed out on the opportunity to consistently contest against, and learn from the best players produced by the West Indies.
The resulting impact on West Indies cricket, which became reality a decade and more latter when the foreign-based “generals retired and gone” (Rudder) began to be seen.
Then the attractions for our best players were significant fees (not comparative to those earned by our contemporary exports) but far in excess of what could have been earned playing Shell Shield cricket.
The incentives of today are the same increased by hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars per contracted player. Of significance too in the determination by our players to favour the franchised leagues are the international exposure and fame they receive.
Their abilities, images and personalities blazoned across screens to hundreds of millions of screaming fans, bring joys of accomplishment to their souls.
It’s the glory of capitalism, the material wealth, the adoration and more applied to cricket; that’s not easy to resist for those existing on the periphery.
More than simply being big attractions to the live audiences, our best players have pioneered in those leagues. The Big Hitters; the acrobatic fieldsmen have created new moves; our mystery spinner (Narine) invented whole new deliveries along with another with special abilities in “death bowling” (Bravo) have come out of the inventive West Indian mind.
As with our great players of the 1960s and 1970s, the rigours of playing professional cricket, whatever the format, have converted our talented batsmen and bowlers into hardened professionals.
As professionals, they understand and have experienced the reality that there is no sentiment which will earn them a pro-contract (and help them to keep it) in the leagues: performance is all that matters; there are no national and other sentiments to earning the big bucks.
The owners and managers of the franchised teams have to provide entertainment to keep the fans coming through the gates and fixed in front their television screens. The franchise owners take no responsibility for developing the capabilities and professionalism of West Indian cricketers. If that happens by the way, that is a bonus for our players and West Indian cricket.
Just to underline the point that developing professionalism in our cricket, as in sports such as athletics, football, boxing, cycling, tennis has always had an international dimension to it.
Going back to the 1930s our great ancestors, Constantine and Headley carried their teams on their shoulders in the English leagues. They were followed in the leagues by the generations of Weeks and Worrell and then by the likes of Gilchrist, Hall with Sobers and Kanhai, Gibbs, Murray and several others who played county cricket and in the Australian state league.
The ultimate example of our West Indian players opting for financially rewarding contracts, as opposed to playing for the West Indies, was the team led by Lloyd, Richards and the others in Packer’s Professional league.
And no one can say a negative word about the commitment to the West Indian nation of that group of players. For their efforts to enhance their cricket and status in life, they encountered an unyielding bureaucracy soaked in colonial-type perspectives.
The Mighty Sparrow had a few insightful thoughts and language to explain the behaviours and dictates of the then board members. It still makes for informative and at times hilarious listening. Check it out.
As it was then so is it today: the intent of the players has been and continues to be to earn a decent living for themselves and families.
I refuse though to say that the desire to play on the professional stages of world cricket is exclusively to chase down the mighty dollar in preference to having other values such as commitment to nationhood and its virtues.
Many of our greatest players during the attempt by white South Africa to bribe its way back into international cricket refused the attraction of “filthy lucre” in preference to recognizing the slogan of our times: “Black Lives Matter”.
So to our credit as West Indians we have not been materialistic to the point of having no other values.
We, those of us sitting on the sidelines making judgmental calls against players who have to utilize their talents to earn a decent living for themselves and families, must recognize the predicament of these young men.
I do not call blame on them without consideration for their desire in this materialistic world where only the size and quality of your home and vehicle, where you can send your children for a tertiary level education and play themselves in the best adornments and dine at fashionable restaurants, are of significance.
Our challenge as part of the West Indian nation with this great cricketing heritage (frankly, our place in the world in which we have gained greatest reputation and made contributions to) left to us by our distinguished ancestors is to grow into our responsibility to find the solutions to this problem. We cannot continue with the post-colonial trait of depending wholly on external assistance to achieve our greatness.
Walcott said something to the effect that we as a West Indian peoples live on the coasts of our islands forever looking out to sea for our salvation.
That weakness of belief in self has been brutally exposed over the last couple decades after Packer, Lloyd and his gallant men with the assistance of mind trainer, Dr. Rudi Webster, created the greatest cricket team, most likely the greatest team in team sports, ever.
The world and the nationalist ethic and that of amateur sport of previous eras cannot be compared with the contemporary culture. Materialism is the going currency of the time. When cricketers, a large percentage of whom come from humble backgrounds, conceive of a future in which they can acquire the basics for life, just like the highly-paid and vaunted professionals sitting in their swivel chairs and relaxing at the poolside sipping high-cost beverages, they conclude: “Why Not”?
The challenge, therefore, is to nurture our foremost talents in the kind of environment required for them to realise their best possibilities through the acquisition of technique, temperament, mental strength and competition against the best.
To this end, let me toss out a couple ideas, obvious ones and extend the challenge to you the reader to give us all the benefits of your wisdom, i.e., what are the solutions based on the above analysis.
We have to create a professional environment in the West Indies around training and conscientizing of our young players from primary school into the Test and professional leagues.
There are many roads to accomplishing that task. If our best professionals cannot always be available to play in the regional tournaments, then they should commit to counselling, coaching and making themselves available to help young players.
When Everton Weekes returned from a tour, the young Garfield Sobers would spend a couple weeks with him for Everton to teach the young man all there was to know about batting in conditions dramatically different to those at home.
CWI has to recognize and to make acceptable concessions in the interest of all involved. For instance, there must also be another look at criteria to be observed to allow our players who earn a living in the foreign leagues to qualify without going through a series of obstacles.
Ultimately, all the efforts must lead to a professionalizing of our regional tournaments to provide the quality required of our West Indian players to contest with the world.
Let’s share our views we cannot sit back and depend completely on a small group of cricket administrators to have all the best answers.
The West Indian cricketing nation depends on all of us.
