Cricket funny business – the Patterson Report

10

In the book, Great Gatsby, the author had one of the leading characters observe, “You can’t relive the past”. That remains a fundamental truth. Perhaps one of these days we may find technology permitting us to do as the movie suggests, ‘Back to the Future’ but until such time we have to live with the fundamental truth in Great Gatsby.

The Patterson Committee seems to have missed the boat if its intention is to aid in the restructuring of the game in the Caribbean.

Misguided

Clearly the regional governments still feel a sense of pain at the decline in the ranking of the West Indies cricket team in international cricket and want to help in whatever ways possible. They foolishly and misguidedly allowed themselves to throw millions of dollars behind the WICB to host the CWC2007 without appropriate analysis (a common feature among Caribbean politicians).

While the sport of football has taken the region by storm and is easily the most popular game being played by our youths and elders, especially among th
e poor, our politicians have stayed with cricket. Who can bame them? That is all they knew while growing up. They have remained caught up in their own past, perhaps trying now to relive it.

Even Basketball has emerged ahead of cricket in terms of its popularity among the region’s youths, especially among the poor. Like football, basketball now offers youths, especially the poor, a world of opportunities to rise out of their poverty-stricken state. They can access scholarships and professional contracts in abundance compared to what is possible within cricket.