Once-mighty West Indies are a dying force, and the ICC is to blame

COMMENT: India, England and Australia become richer, while have-nots are left to get by on scraps

Sri Lanka appeal successfully for the wicket of Kemar Roach as they complete an innings victory over West Indies in Galle ( AFP/Getty)

Blink and you would have missed the latest instalment in a process of decline which is accelerating so fast that one of the great forces in world cricket could be extinct in 10 years. It was West Indies’ innings defeat in the first of their two-Test series in Sri Lanka, all over in a little less than four days and enough to break your heart if you viewed that imperious side of the 1980s with admiration as well as resignation.

At a time when rugby union’s reward for seeking to expand the game has been a kaleidoscope of new World Cup talent, cricket’s masters are protecting a tight, moneyed elite to which the Caribbean does not belong. The International Cricket Council want to get away with reducing membership of their 2019 World Cup from 14 to 10 nations and one possible device, it emerged last week, is to cut the number who qualify automatically to six. Bye, bye West Indies. They won’t fancy qualification.

It’s only three weeks since they failed, for the first time, to qualify for the Champions Trophy one-day international tournament, contested by the top eight sides in the world. Two days before that ignominy their coach Phil Simmons was suspended for declaring his unhappiness with the team picked for the ODI series in Sri Lanka.

An Economist piece on the side’s decline by the writer Tim Wigmore lays bare the shocking statistical collapse. West Indies won 71 and lost a mere 20 Test matches against the other eight Test-playing nations between March 1976 and March 1995. Since June 2000, they have won 14 and lost 78.

This destruction has, to a substantial degree, been self-inflicted. The West Indies Cricket Board and West Indies Players’ Association have been in a state of perpetual warfare, leaving the islands’ best players with no compunction about becoming T20 mercenaries rather than playing for their national team. Who, in the Caribbean, wants to watch a sub-standard, under-strength cricket team when there is American basketball on TV?

But that is only part of the story. As Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber’s critically acclaimed film Death of a Gentleman revealed this summer, the opaque, unaccountable ICC has seen to it that a small oligarchy of three wealthy cricket nations – India, England and Australia – have become richer, while the have-nots are left to get by on scraps as best they can, with West Indies, one of the latter, down in the dust. The Caribbean is still unsure whether India will inflict the grave financial blow on them of refusing to tour their islands in the future: recrimination for the West Indies’ abandoning a tour of the sub-continent this year because of a pay dispute. The way the ICC distributes money is also about to change, to the detriment of West Indies, with Australia and England receiving over $150m (£97m) each over the next eight years, India over $500m and the West Indies around $80m – $43m less than they would have expected under the current system, The Economist suggests.

Just ask Ireland how it feels to be among the have-nots. Their excellent displays in a tightly-fought ODI series in Zimbabwe this month reflects a growth which they owe to excellent governance. The ICC could not even conjure the minor imaginative leap to pay for a few cameras so that it might be found on YouTube. A little-noticed press release entitled “Outcomes from the ICC Board and Committee meetings” last Tuesday outlined the new funding regime for smaller nations like Ireland. The shared $55m rise will be mostly eaten up by inflation.

It is this climate which gives you cause to grieve at the words of Clive Lloyd in his forward to the book Fire in Babylon, inspired by the 2011 film of the same name, which captured the high tide mark of West Indies cricket. Lloyd reflects on what lives most vividly from those times. “Joel Garner’s deep laugh and the infectious chuckle of Alvin Kallicharran… Desmond Haynes’ raised eyebrows, which were the sign that some kind of horseplay was around the corner.” Lloyd would lean on his bat at the non-striker’s end at The Oval, “inhaling the exuberant buzz that only a West Indian cricket crowd far from home can create. How could we not try to do our best with that kind of support?”

In his playing days, Lloyd felt the strength of the passing generations. Rohan Kanhai and Garry Sobers learned from Frank Worrell who, in turn, had taken good things from George Headley and Learie Constantine. The roots of the West Indian cricket family tree were deeper and stronger than those of all other cricket-playing nations, Lloyd writes. “My great hope is that today’s West Indian cricketers can somehow absorb that strength too.”

Salvation will require more than that, but is anyone ready to help to save West Indies cricket? Death of a Gentleman’s revelations about the ICC’s neglect of Test cricket struck a chord, with protests at The Oval last month. So Sam Collins asked Sports Minister Tracey Crouch if she would meet him to discuss concerns about the administration of a sport for which England must surely carry some responsibility. The letter from her office arrived only last week. She would not be able to schedule a meeting, it said.

City money trumps United in the appeal to China

In Manchester derby week, some early bragging rights for the blue half of town. The Chinese president Xi Jingping has turned down an invitation to visit Old Trafford – as part of the itinerary of his British visit this week – in favour of the Etihad Stadium. China’s relations with Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour evidently helped more than Sun Jihai’s six years in sky blue: Chinese trade with Abu Dhabi is expected to hit $16bn this year. But when you discover that football-mad Mr Xi was lobbied on United’s behalf by Lord Jim O’Neill you wonder whether – powerful an ally though the former Goldman Sachs head is – a man whose number was simply “7” is not engaged by United as an ambassador now that Sir Alex Ferguson has gone. Even Chinese presidents want to be at a David Beckham hang-out.

Hillsborough: the inquests and the sorrow continue

The image of Tony Bland in his grey Candy Liverpool kit. The story of how, though his heart was re-started on a football pitch, he died anyway. The quiet dignity of his family, who had asked the barrister representing them to thank Colin Flenley, the off-duty GP who tried to save their son, for all that he did, when he gave testimony on Friday. The Hillsborough inquests quietly go on, yielding up a multitude of sorrows every day.