Our cricket would not be fixed outside of fixing of the society

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The West Indies cricket team is unlikely to play in the ICC 2017 Champions Trophy, simply because we may not be ranked in the top eight countries. Bangladesh has just zoomed past the West Indies who do not have many chances left to reverse the rankings. If this happens, it would represent a new low for a cricketing nation that once ruled the cricket world. From the great examples set by the teams of the 1950s-1970s, we have plummeted to almost nothingness.When the usual finger-pointing subsides, and the cricket analysts have had their say, the state of the Caribbean society and its cricket culture would be in the same vulnerable place. A lot is wrong with the management of West Indies cricket. A lot is wrong with the attitude of the cricketers themselves. But there is also a lot that is wrong with our cricket analysis. It is generally devoid of imagination. Somehow, somewhere, those charged with interpreting our Caribbean reality have surrendered our traditional ability to critique the world around us, and in the process, created alternative spaces and possibilities for the Caribbean peoples. As it is in our politics, so it is in cricket and other forms of popular expression. We have retreated from the glorious heights of 1980-1995, when armed with a single-minded determination to move beyond what Martin Carter called “the niggeryard of yesterday,” our cricketers took our Caribbean to the zenith of 20th century global civilization. The smallest, least populated and poorest cricketing nation—the small axe—standing at the front of the world and turning the scars of bondage into a carnival of freedom and equal worth. There is something radically wrong with a society that can move with such swiftness from ultimate glory to a state of disintegration. And worse yet, from top to bottom, we seem incapable of grasping our misery. CLR James’ “Beyond a Boundary” is no longer the measuring rod of our cricketing expression. We are swayed by narrow, meaningless chatter about “team balance” and “WIBC vs WIPA vs Players”, which blinds us from the gist of the matter at hand. Our cricket would not be fixed outside of fixing of the society. After all, it is from the society that our cricketers and administrators are recruited. It is instructive to learn that a large section of the public is sympathetic to and identify with the rampant individualism as the normative present and future of the society at large. Therefore, for them, celebration of the team is replaced by celebration of the individual player. In the absence of team glory, many became obsessed with the individual player, either as good or evil. Therein lies our inability to lift ourselves out of the mess.