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Port of Spain, T&T, Thursday 14th April 2005: Propaganda! It is a peculiar form of information offensive popularised in modern times by Adolf Hitler and his information minister Joseph Gobebels, and is now widely used by politicians, market-place operators and others to control, manipulate, characterise and castigate whole nations of people.
With such an understanding of the usage of propaganda in mind it should not be considered incidental nor is it innocent the recent propaganda offensive directed against Brian Lara, Dinanath Ramnarine and in general West Indies cricket by outsiders.
First, it must have struck the reader as strange the attention that the CricInfo Web site has paid to the organisation and functioning of the West Indies Players Association and its duly elected president Ramnarine.
Indeed, not even the West Indies Cricket Board has waged such a war of antagonism and vitriol against WIPA and its president, despite the many recurring conflicts between the two bodies.
On the evening he wanted to make the board's case to the West Indian peoples, president Teddy Griffith stuck to figures seeking to make WIPA seem over-demanding and unreasonable in its representations on behalf of a group of highly-paid cricketers. Never was he derogatory and diminishing in the manner of one Martin Williamson. West Indians could far more genuinely ask "who the hell is he?"
And although this Williamson, in what seemed like mock consternation, slapped the Digicel executive on the wrists for referring to WIPA as a "terrorist organisation" in the infamously leaked memo, he carried out a just as callous and unconscionable attack on the WIPA president.
The question must therefore be asked why? How come all of a sudden such an outsider is interested in the organisation of a players association in the West Indies and its relationship with the governing board in this contest over sponsorship rights? In whose interest is Williamson pursuing this attempt at denigration?
Then there is the related attack by former England captain Mike Atherton on Brian Lara. Who asked Atherton for advice on the importance of Lara to West Indies cricket? Are we children unable to determine the importance of the greatest batsman of the last 30 years to our cricket?
It is too easy, even simplistic, to dismiss Atherton as a failed England captain whose team felt the wrath of Lara. Coinciding as it does with the attack on Ramnarine, the two being perceived to be the main protagonists in the sponsorship conflict, it cannot be a matter of chance occurrence.
If you consider the language and the characterisation of Lara as a "big fish in a small pond" and the references to the nature of West Indian society, you would understand that this was far more than someone sitting idle waiting for the Ashes series to begin.
No, it was wicked
and malicious in the vein of the ugliest attacks on West Indian
cricket, our players and society that was so typical when the
WI dominated the cricket world in at least two periods of cricket
history.Understanding that the propaganda war pays little attention to reality, most of what Williamson and Atherton said does not need a response. However, there are just a couple things that should be pointed out, especially to our people least they become victims of the propaganda. Indeed there are those West Indian scribes who have typically sided with the slave master to perhaps get the opportunity to work in the house rather than the field.
One, Atherton must certainly realise that Lara is the biggest fish in the international lake over the last 13 years and must rank amongst the first five of the greatest batsmen in the history of this illustrious game.
Two, that the West Indies with the smallest population and territory amongst the Test-playing nations must rank as one of the greatest, having dominated Test cricket for 15 years in one period and for the majority of the 1960s, first under Frank Worrell and then led by the incomparable Gary Sobers.
Moreover, Atherton, the West Indies have produced perhaps four or five of the dozen greatest players in the history of the game. So we are no "never-see, come-see" drooling over a great player, they have flowed from the fertile loins of our women and men.
However this column is not really to respond to the two propagandists and those behind the propaganda, but to give support to those amongst us who sometimes lack the self-confidence and are taken-in by the attacks from outside.
In this connection it was uplifting and refreshing at the launch of phase two of the Sticky Wicket Cricket Hall of Fame to give recognition to our greatest players, their achievements both on the field and "beyond the boundary" as a means to give lustre to this West Indian civilisation that has been under construction for the last 500 years.
To hear Sir Viv Richards say that he was inspired by the injunction of Frank Worrell that if the WI were to progress in the game they would have to turn to the "small islands" for resources was to understand anew the legacy of this the father of the post-war WI cricket. And to hear his thinking on Sir Frank supported by the venerable Andy Ganteaume, one of those players who suffered in the colonial era, makes the legacy even richer.
Not surprisingly, both former players were in unison on the contribution of Learie Constantine, cricketer and the one-man advance guard for generations of West Indians who went to England to play cricket, get an education and live as equal human beings in the "mother" country.
But in all of the talk at the forum to induct another two former players to the Sticky Wicket Hall of Fame, the moment of appreciation was when Ganteaume, who played with Lord Learie, described the restless, creative imagination of Constantine, forever seeking to find a new shot.
Richards could barely contain himself with admiration for the play of Constantine, which he had never seen but had inherited in his West Indian genes.
I asked the "Master Blaster" how do we inculcate in our young players this their natural inheritance. He answered directly and with the same frontal approach used against the fast bowlers of his time: "Ask that of the West Indies board."
I repeat for the umpteenth time: West Indians have to take charge of West Indies cricket from the interlopers, privateers and modern day mercenaries.