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By Tony Cozier |
From his office in New York, where he was St Lucia's Ambassador to the United Nations for eight years, the former vice-president followed the continuing chaos with alarm.
Most of all, he was aghast at the antagonism between the WICB and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA). He was baffled by the differences that led to actual and threatened strike action by the players, by the need to seek arbitration to settle disagreements and by the antagonistic language used by both sides in their dealings with each other.
"I found it difficult to understand why the players were in the north pole and the board in the south," he said. "It just didn't make sense."
So, as one of his
first aims in office, he set about pouring oil on those troubled
waters. "One of the objectives has been to get across, once and for all, that the board and the players constitute a partnership," he stated, speaking during his stay in Johannesburg for the current, initial ICC World Twenty20 tournament.
As such, he appointed the WIPA head, Dinanath Ramnarine as a non-executive member of the board, so the WIPA can now be "part of the solution instead of continuing to be perceived as part of the problem".
Ramnarine, the former Trinidad and Tobago and West Indies leg-spinner, took over the WIPA in 2002, since when, in the words of the Jamaica Gleaner , he has "conducted a long and intensive guerilla campaign against the WICB".
Hunte's predecessor Ken Gordon, accused him of "publicly denigrating the board, its officers and executives at every meeting" and charged that he was "incapable of rising to the level of maturity now required if the relationship between the WIPA and the WICB is to contribute to the development of West Indies cricket".
Hunte took a different view, although his decision to position Ramnarine on the board was not original.
He was vice-president when the WICB gave an annual grant of US$50 000 to reactivate a dormant WIPA a dozen years ago and when WIPA representatives (then David Holford and Roland Holder) sat in on board meetings.
Pointing out that he has "a little experience in the trade union movement" in his native St Lucia, the new president saw Ramnarine's appointment as an opportunity to begin bridging the divide between WIPA and WICB.
As far as he is concerned, the relationship between the two should concern not only the question of fees and contracts but also "providing assistance as it relates to the performance of the players".
The ultimate aim is to reverse the decline that has seen the West Indies plummet from top to bottom in the international standings within a decade.
Typical of a politician who knows what it is to canvass for electoral votes, albeit not always successfully, Hunte has gone beyond Ramnarine's formal appointment to bonding with the players themselves.
While the team was in Johannesburg for the ICC World Twenty20 Championships , Hunte took them all to dinner, entertained several in his hotel room, went into the dressing room before matches and met separately with captain Ramnaresh Sarwan and vice-captain Chris Gayle, both of whom have had recent issues with the WICB.
He also heard from manager Mike Findlay whose report on the England tour in the summer opened his eyes to much of the players' ill feeling towards the board
"What I've been trying to do is to get to know these guys, to hear whatever complaints they might have, whatever suggestions they want to make," he said. "I felt on this visit what I had to do was to establish a relationship that I can build on."
"I got the impression that sometimes those guys felt they were out there on their own, that they were playing but nobody cared," he observed.
"It is not just the money, as much as that is important to them. But that is not all. You want to instill in them the pride of playing for the West Indies and how important it is for them to win."
Hunte said a camp of meaningful length is planned at the new performance centre in Barbados in November to properly prepare the players for pending assignments against Zimbabwe, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Australia.
He explained that a similar, shorter exercise prior to the World Twenty20 was not feasible in the Caribbean but was held instead in South Africa where the team had arrived before the others.
"When I saw their performances in the two warm-up matches, especially when they beat New Zealand, the fielding, (Daren) Powell's tremendous spell (4-3-1-4), the sensible batting, I really felt they could win the tournament," he said. "But then we had all those wides and dropped catches in the opening match against South Africa. It showed up the inconsistency."
"As long as I am there, the board is going to do everything possible to ensure that they have the tools to do the job, so there can't be any more excuses [for failure]."
*Tony Cozier is a commentator and leading cricket writer in the Caribbean.