It's fair to say that the men who play cricket for the West Indies and the men who run cricket in the West Indies don't like each other very much. But the continuing spat between them, which recently has seen accusations of unprofessionalism and mismanagement tossed around like wayward balls during catching practice, just got nastier. And its implications were ratcheted up a notch.
Chris Gayle posed with the trophy for highest run-scorer of the 2011 Indian Premier League after his Chennai Super Kings won the final match in Chennai, May 28.
In taking the West Indies Cricket Board to court for alleged restraint of trade, the West Indies Players' Association could hasten the drain of top players away from international cricket, in particular the Test variety. The need to stop that happening provides just one more in a series of reasons why the game needs to take a long, hard look at its governance.
On one level, the brouhaha in the Windies is a personality clash—a handbag fight for control between board president Julian Hunte and Chief Executive Ernest Hilaire on one hand, and on the other a group of increasingly angry, empowered and demanding players, led by former captain Chris Gayle, a man who certainly knows his own considerable worth. But beyond the personal politics, the argument has long hinged on that most vexed of sporting loyalty issues: club versus country. Read more