Leading Edge: The fire in Babylon is dead, and cricket helped kill it

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape town

IT isn’t a West Indies tour if it doesn’t start under the cloud of a pay dispute, and here we go again. If they turn up in SA this season, no-one will be surprised. In fact, there would be surprise only if they did not arrive.

We can no longer take the West Indians seriously on or off the field. Somehow, they have made it to our shores in the past, and somehow they are tolerated as an unreasonable facsimile of the team they used to be. The fire in Babylon is dead.

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) are among cricket’s poorest cousins. Even if they had more money, they would still have to overcome the vicious politics of trying to weld a team out of the players of 16 countries. More money would only mean more to fight over.

That West Indies were once the kings of cricket had everything to do with a generation of giants standing tall in a game nowhere near as crassly moneyed as it is now. All modern cricket wants from West Indies is their players - not their team nor their history nor their future.

So, can other national boards wonder why player unhappiness on those islands lingers when they disrespect and undermine efforts to resolve the problems by brazenly signing West Indian players for their T20 circuses?

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) are fuming about the Windies walking out on their tour there - enough to cancel India’s future tours to the Caribbean and to unleash their lawyers on the WICB.

But the BCCI’s anger does not extend to telling West Indians as individuals they do not have the option of earning big money playing in the Indian Premier League until they sort out their issues with their board, which would be in the best interests of world cricket. Oh no. That would rob the tournament of drawcards like Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard. The hypocrisy would be astounding if it was not committed by so brazenly selfish an organisation as the BCCI.

Something similar has happened in SA, where the services of five West Indians have been secured for the franchise T20 competition. You would think that, with the tour in the balance, and with it SA’s last chunk of preparation for the World Cup, an alarm would have sounded.

Instead, SA cricket has done its bit for creating a generation of free agents who respect no-one and nothing except their employers. Good job.