It is now all over.
The Cricket World Cup 2007, CWC2007, is finally over. The dust has already settled and now it is time to return to reality. It is time to return to the harsh reality of how we as a Caribbean so often make fools of ourselves, leaving us the laughing stock of much of the developed world.
Caribbean Governments
Our Caribbean Governments were generally taken along for the biggest and most ridiculous rides in the history of the region.
In hindsight, one Government after another has bemoaned the way in which it was sucked into the CWC2007. But that is part of our Caribbean reality. Our leaders are bereft of any genuine understanding of many things that affect the lives of our peoples yet they simply believe that they do. In an approach that was decidedly myopic but nonetheless distinctively bias the Caribbean Governments, without exception, hastened to sign on the dotted line without appreciating the impact of what they signed into law on our peoples, especially the poor among us. The poor in every one of the countries where World Cup matches were held, including warm-up matches, were served up as sacrificial lambs.
In the case of St Vincent and the Grenadines, the Government’s myopia forced a wasteful expenditure on facilities for a sport that has long since lost its soul. Cricket in St Vincent and the Grenadines has long since lost its appeal to the vast majority of the nation’s youths and children.
The more popular sport of football has been ignored and the youths of the nation are angry. That is the reality.
While still under the ridiculous regulations of the CWC2007 only cricket could have been given the right of access to use the legacy playing fields. All other sporting disciplines that would normally utilise these facilities have been declared anathema.
The Sion Hill football field is being realigned without any consultation with anyone. It seems that the rationale is that of minimising the impact of the game on the expensive cricket facilities.
So, the facilities of Arnos Vale, Sion Hill, and Stubbs are our treasured CWC2007 legacies and the footballers will have a torrid time getting access at will.
A new agreement between the National Sports Council, NSC, and the local Cricket Association has seen a new deal in respect of the Buccament playing field for use of the Stanford 20/20 monies.
The cricket buffs are licking their lips in pleasure while the footballers are being marginalised.
One wonders whether there is not a concerted effort to kill the game of football in St Vincent and the Grenadines given the madness that has taken place via the CWC2007.
It is of course sheer madness when one takes a closer look at what has in fact happened.
The nation’s most popular sport by a very long way now finds itself on the fringes largely because of the prejudiced approach of a select few steeped in their love of a game that has long since lost its popularity in the State.
Football has no single field that it can call home.
We should not at all express surprise at the vexed relations that players of the game of football now have with all sports administrators at the governmental level.
The reality is that it appears reasonable to believe that in their desire to facilitate the select few in the sport of cricket the Government has virtually abandoned the nation’s most popular sport.
It would not be long therefore before we see a return to those old days where the football fraternity turn on the authorities with venom that hurts where it matters most.
What has happened in sport in St Vincent and the Grenadines in the past several months is nothing short of a sort of blighted ignorance bred out of a callous disregard and disrespect for anything other than cricket.
Cricket and Class
Cricket has been dubbed the game of gentlemen and so it has always been associated with class.
In the recent past, especially in the Caribbean, the class component of the game is not with the players, many of whom come from the lower echelons of society. Today’s cricket sees the social class being present in the leadership of the respective governing bodies for the sport. These leaders understand the importance of maintaining the class structure within the sport and so the leadership essentially revolves around members of the higher social classes everywhere.
Rather interestingly in the case of the CWC2007, the main organisers in almost every instance sought people of high social standing in an effort to facilitate the maintenance of that class hegemony in the sport and to appease the international cricketing fraternity.
While some analysts quickly boast of the extent to which cricket has been a great leveler of peoples in the Caribbean, the reality quickly hits home that at the leadership level this is not in fact the case. The CWC2007 reflected this harsh social reality and the extent to which it is being perpetuated in a part of the world where the struggle against colonialism is far from over.
Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that the worst aspect of colonialism was the colonisation of the mind. Franz Fanon was adept at making this very point. It is as true today as it was in the heyday of political colonialism.
The legacy is particularly evident in West Indies cricket.
A quick perusal of the leadership of the Cricket Associations in the Caribbean, as well as their respective LOC leaders, will confirm the extent to which social class has been of considerable importance to the fraternity.
Even the Governments did not get it right. They too capitulated to the class bias of the sport and played along, ignoring, for the most part, the complaints of the masses.
SVG Cricket Legacies
Now that the Cricket World Cup has ended we here in St Vincent and the Grenadines now have to face up to maintaining our legacies.
To begin with, there is nothing in the realm of sport that even so much as looms on the horizon that will require the services of the so-called volunteer corps that has been trained. We may well find that the personnel are then utilised as liaison officers for Government functions more than for sport, in the short to medium term, if they are to be kept as a corps.
The playing fields and support infrastructure will not benefit from the frequent usage for anything other than cricket for some time to come.
At Arnos Vale, the approach to the new facility seems to be to treat it like a primadonna of sorts. We will sit back and boast of how good it looks while the elements take a heavy toll with rusting everywhere.
The Government does not have the resources to facilitate the kind of maintenance that is necessitated for Arnos Vale alone, far less for the other new and/or refurbished facilities.
The NSC has never been supplied with the resources in the past to facilitate adequate maintenance of one facility at Arnos Vale. Nothing will change in this regard.
Perhaps we should also raise here the suggested approach that the new Arnos Vale facility be put under separate management, not directly under the NSC.
This suggestion seems to ring as some sort of nepotism. It may well be that the Government of the day may be seeking to feather somebody else’s cap in so far as the creation of yet another entity for the sole management of Arnos Vale is concerned.
The NSC is in woeful need of an overhaul and this may well be where the Government should be channeling its energies rather than seeking piecemeal solutions of the order being suggested at present.
There is no way in the short to medium term that without significant access to the football fraternity the authorities would be able to raise revenue from sporting activities at the Arnos Vale or any of its other newly refurbished venues. The other revenue-generating options are entertainment and religious activities.
Initially, we had a fanciful document that heralded hotel development as part of the CWC2007 legacy here. That was never really on the cards and so it was wrong for the LOC or any other authority here to have suggested it in the first place.
Our legacy document stated, the inception of the Bed & Breakfast and Homestay Programme for Cricket World Cup 2007 not only seeks to supplement the existing hotel accommodation during this time but will remain in place hence on.
One is not certain that the LOC was serious when it placed the aforementioned paragraph in a document. One would really like to know where in St Vincent and the Grenadines any institution has established itself under the aforementioned programme.
An additional legacy component was that of medical, security and disaster management. Perhaps the less said about this the better. We continue to have difficulty with our disaster management system. Things happen and then we react. We have become proficient at adhocracy.
We now have shootings everywhere and murders are occurring at a very rapid pace. These suggest that we are not yet on top of any security arrangements for the masses of this country.
Of course, the murder of Pakistan coach, Bob Woolmer, in his hotel room in Jamaica, put an unfortunate stigma on the security system in the entire Caribbean, something we will probably never live down.
The legacy document spoke to sports development in this country. What it should have addressed was the development of the sport of cricket almost exclusive of everything else.
There is nothing that the LOC has done to assist any other sport but cricket.
The netball fraternity was thrown into a tailspin of sorts as they pleaded with the LOC and the NSC to repair the courts at the Arnos Vale Sports Complex in time for the official opening ceremony of the Annual Cable and Wireless National Tournament on 29th April 2007. For some time the netball authorities were being shifted literally from pillar to post.
Vincentians do have a right to ask, What Legacy?
Those who love, play, and understand sport in St Vincent and the Grenadines must be cringing at the gross disservice done to them by the sports authorities here.
In a sense, we have found ourselves much like the Jamaican Tourism Association. The latter organisation was bothered by the way in which Caribbean Governments sacrificed the Caribbean Tourism Industry for 58 days of cricket. Here at home, we wonder why it was that the development of sports in the state was sacrificed and held ransom for four goat cook matches.
