Cricket in Moneyland By George John

Port of Spain, T&T, Wednesday, March 9th 2005: "It's a great huge game of chess that's being played-all over the world-if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them. I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if only I might join-though of course I should like to be a Queen best."
-From Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

In the 128 years since the first Test match was played, this between England and Australia at Melbourne, international cricket has survived three major crises. But none of them as idiotic as the current fourth crisis, the brouhaha between the West Indies players, the West Indies Board, and the telecom giants, sponsors Cable and Wireless and Digicel.
"Body-line" bowling, the English creation designed to tame the dominant batting of the great Don Bradman during the 1932-33 Antipodean tour, heralded the first controversy that put the future of the international game in jeopardy.
The technique developed by the strong-minded English skipper, D.R. Jardine, was to have his trio of speedsters, among them Harold Larwood who was then the fastest in the world, bowl short ones aimed at the leg stump with the ball rearing up at the body. The batsman would either defend himself by dodging, or patting the ball to the close onside infield of five, or let the ball hit him, receiving a nasty blow in the process. Relations between England and Australia over what the host country termed unsportsmanship reached the point of collapse.
The second crisis developed 91 years later. Basil D'Oliveira, the mixed race South African, his skills stymied at home, migrated, played county cricket and was selected to represent England scheduled to tour his old country in 1968-9.
South Africa refused to accept him. The MCC, facing the wrath of furious anti-apartheid militants at home and among the Third World cricketing family, dillied and dallied. Then after much agonising and British Government intervention they called the tour off. Eventually, South Africa was forced out of international cricket, remaining in the cold until apartheid was abolished.
The third crisis was inspired by the Kerry Packer World Cricket Series in 1977 when about 50 international players signed contracts that earned them more money than they had ever played for. The nervous cricketing authorities in England, Australia, the West Indies were horrified. For a time it seemed as though Test cricket as we knew it was about to collapse.
The Packer circus lasted just two years. Yet its influence is still with us-the American baseball like atmosphere, the coloured clothing on the field, the one-dayers instead of those "dreary" Tests that seem to have no end, entertainment to attract the crowds who are ignorant of the difference between a googlie and an off drive but who like the scene.
Incidentally, among the West Indians who signed with Packer were Clive Lloyd, who at once stage resigned his captaincy of the West Indies team, Viv Richards, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Collis King, Bernard Julien, and Gordon Greenidge.
The root of the current impasse lies in the credit given to cheque book cricket. Sponsorship has assumed primary importance. Without it, cricketers would not be able to fly around the world as they do now accompanied by coaches, managers, physiotherapists, stay at the best hotels, and live a year-round life of relative ease.
Comparisons of cricketers' pay with those of golfers, tennis players, footballers showed, at least until recently, that star batsmen, bowlers, fieldsmen were close to the poor house. As Packer himself put it, he was pleading "the impoverished cause" of his players.
Now, according to Board President Teddy Griffith, the top cricketers make as much money as the highest paid people in their territories. But the cricket authority is bankrupt. No money is in the kitty. Without sponsorship of one kind or another the regional tournaments would be impossible, players could not be paid and Test cricket involving the region might be a thing of the past. Indeed, the World Cup Cricket which we are due to stage in 2007 would be impossible without a godfather. And so, unlike Alice who saw the ground marked out like a huge chess board, divided up into squares by a number of little green hedges that reached from one tiny brook to another, West Indian cricket, gazing through the looking glass, can see little to comfort them.
On Alice's large chess board, the Digicel boss is playing black; the Cable and Wireless CEO white. But no kings and queens, bishops, knights and castles are visible on that board. Only the men whom Alice saw "moving about somewhere."
Those were the Pawns. In today's realistic scenario they are our cricketers whose future is not so much in their own hands as in those of the Goliaths sitting around tables in telecom board rooms deciding how much money to dole out and how and when their players may expose their advertising symbols on their cricketing outfits.
The question facing Teddy Griffith and his colleagues and indeed the Caricom heads of government who have been intervening in this issue is whether their old Cable and Wireless backers are to be stumped by the new boy on the block, Digicel, who has been moving to establish itself on the telecom scene in the Anglophone Caribbean, or whether a way can be found to have them work amicably together.
If only, as with Alice, this was a dream. But our recent past has been over-full of conflict between players and Board, boycotts, controversy, all of which have affected on-field performance.
The Prince of Port of Spain a Pawn? It boggles the imagination.