"BAT ON TEMBA BAVUMA...BAT ON"

It has been a little over 22 years since South Africa’s Apartheid system gave way to a participatory democracy which allows its Black majority population as well as South Africans of mixed-racial background to participate in their electoral process and South African life in general. The political transformation may have given its Black population the vote but this transition of its majority population has been a slow and tedious process. Racial discrimination has been a part of South Africa’s history since its colonization in 1652, and even with the events of 1994 the levelling of the playing field has been long in coming with the expected dismantling of the exclusionary policies that characterized that country grinding slowly but still in the favor of the Whites.
In South Africa, playing sports provide participants with a huge platform from which they are able to improve their life’s chances and the best way in which this development can be assured is through the school system.
Rugby and cricket are the premier sports in that country and given its history of apartheid where sport is for the white elites and at all times they enjoyed the best of available facilities. For its majority Black population precluded for generations from equal access to such facilities, this represented an institutionalized stunting of their development.
It is for this reason why the maiden Test century made by Black South African batsman Temba Bavuma earlier this week becomes so special.
Bavuma is the first Black man to play for South Africa as a batsman and he did so 17 years after Makhaya Ntini became the first Black man to play Test Cricket for the country as a bowler. Since then only Mfuneko Ngam, Monde Zondeki, Lonwabo Tsotsobe (all bowlers) and Thami Tsolekile (wicket-keeper) have won a South African Test cap and after that, Kagiso Rabada, another bowler, was capped. Born in 1990, (the same year Nelson Mandela was released from prison) Bavuma best epitomizes the change that is really possible in South Africa even after having struggled through an unfair quota system that is largely designed to minimize the participation of Blacks in the sport.
On the back of this century by Bavuma rides the opportunity for other Black players for whom he has demonstrated that if they were to be allowed (as he was) to attend the best schools where the seeds of transformation can be planted, a hundred at the wicket is just a start. Hopefully Bavuma will continue to ‘bat on” as his presence in the side and especially at the wicket provides a solid base on which the potential of more than 40 million other Blacks in South Africa can dare to hope.

West Indies Cricket… Is It Now Time To Go It Alone?

          Over the last couple of weeks West Indies Cricket has occupied local as well as international sporting headlines despite the regional side not having a team on the field of play. In the first instance there was the demand from Jamaica's Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller that a resolution in the impasse between Chris Gayle and the West Indies Cricket Board be found quickly. Speaking at the Jamaica Cricket Association awards, Prime Minister Simpson-Miller said that Gayle was being treated unjustly and deserved a place in the West Indies team. "Justice delayed (according to Prime Minister Simpson-Miller) is justice denied and we demand that a resolution be found as quickly as possible as Cricket is too important to the people of Jamaica and the West Indies for this to be left down the wicket.” Prime Minister Simpson-Miller’s position is not dissimilar to that expressed by Guyana’s President Bharrat Jhagdeo in Basseterre, St Kitts in July 2011 when he called on Caricom governments to focus their attention to the call from embattled West Indies opener Chris Gayle and intervene in the impasse between him and the West Indies Cricket Board.

       Less than two weeks before Mrs. Simpson–Miller’s comments there was the story of iconic former captain Clive Hubert Lloyd’s resignation as non-member director of the WICB, after being forced to take sides between the board and the Interim Management Committee (IMC) appointed by the Guyana government to run cricket in the country. Lloyd was appointed by the Guyana government following the disputed July 2011 Guyana Cricket Board elections to head the IMC which it established after locking the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) out of its office premises following the elections. The IMC is not recognized by the WICB, which as a result issued Lloyd an ultimatum asking him to choose between the two parties. Lloyd, obviously gutted by the ultimatum alluded to not only his role and status in the global cricket community but also as a former Test player and captain. Accordingly Lloyd stated [“I would have hoped that my decision to answer my country's [Guyana's] call would have signaled a message to you that all was not well with Guyana's cricket and therefore had your support and cooperation. However instead I have found myself caught between my loyalty to my country and loyalty to the WICB. After much deliberation, with a sad heart I had no other option but to tender my resignation as director of the board. I hope that my resignation would act as a catalyst for the members of the board to ask soul searching questions and take a hard look at what could be done differently to get our cricket back to the glory days." ]

Lloyd's letter also touched upon his concerns about the health of the game, in Guyana and in the Caribbean at large. "As one of the most successful West Indian captains in the history of our game, I have to say that I am very concerned not just about the state of cricket in my country but the state of West Indian cricket as a whole - the lack of accountability and consultation and limited discussion about the stagnant state of our cricket."

       The ultimatum issued by the WICB to Lloyd is consistent with the public position of the ICC for non-government involvement in the sport. However, this position taken by the ICC is to my thinking, completely “out of step” with the realities of regional cricket specifically and with world cricket in general.

I will place on record my own view that Gayle’s utterances were not only unfortunate but inconsistent with expectations of one who is the West Indies captain and does not have my support. However, the current modus operandi of the WICB serves as a tolling of the bells of West Indies cricket which as we knew it is now perpetually “Dead.” The spectre of insularity which has always plagued the region’s game since our beginnings in 1928 when the game was represented by the big four; Guyana, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago prevents the island from working together meaningfully. In addition, it is clear that currently, the region’s Board and Management seem more concerned about their own tenure and the obvious benefits that may accrue from this than they are about serious development of the region’s game. Equally, this insularity has seeped onto the players and in an era where the game’s lucre is being driven by abridgement and television revenues it is no longer business as usual. Gone are the days when the game meant as much to the players as they provided a fillip to fans in the Diaspora through the demonstrated examples of their sporting prowess. Today, money talks and everything else walks. Player’s loyalties are to their pockets. Thus the ongoing imbroglio between the WICB and the West Indies Players Association will only produce one result; one in which the game in the region is the loser.
Maybe, just maybe.... it is time for Jamaica and the other teams to apply for individual Test status and go it alone.

                                      George (Atlas) Headley Richard Hugh Blackford (c) 2008
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