20/20 Cricket and the future of the game

Many international sports Federations are so insecure financially or fear becoming insecure that they are only too anxious to comply with the wishes which have become dictates of the television rights holders.
That is precisely what is happening in the case of the 20/20 cricket.
It is a matter of survival of the game.
An analysis of the fortunes of West Indies cricket over its history would reveal that the organisation has spent more time being in the financial red than in the black.
Even as we approach the World Cup being hosted in the region in 2007 it is clear that the indebtedness of the West Indies Cricket Board, WICB, weighs heavily on the way the organisation does business.
The shift towards Pat Rousseau and now to Ken Gordon seems to have emerged out of a consideration that business people are better able to run the organisation successfully than those with a history of involvement in the game.
In this same vein the WICB readily opened its arms to the Stanford 20/20 Cricket Tournament. It is all about survival.

The future
In the case of the West Indies the WICB has not yet engaged in the requisite analysis in respect of the impact of the 20/20 cricket on the future of the sport in the region.
This is of course consistent with the mode of operation of the organisation which remains somewhat archaic.
Over the years the WICB has shown itself incapable of engaging in the kind of analysis that at once allows it to understand the state of the game and to put in place that which is necessary to take the game out of the depths of indebtedness in which it is mired.
Unless the WICB radically changes its mode of operation it is unlikely to engage in any development efforts that are internally generated.
Like the old colonial legacy elsewhere in the region our cricket will also be merely reactive to what is happening elsewhere, joining the rest of the world without ever understanding the rational for having done so.