Asserting that cricket is more than bat and ball, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley expressed concern over the decline of West Indies cricket while delivering the 22nd Frank Worrell Memorial lecture on Tuesday night.
And she called for the game’s governance overhaul.
“We have reached a point where the absolute imperative must be to change the governance of our game,” Mottley asserted.
She described the West Indies’ recent failure to qualify for the ICC ODI World Cup as the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“We are playing the fool, and it is not a little bit of foolery. It is a lot, and I am not casting blame on any single person but I am reaching out to a civilization and to a people,” she stated.
“This is not about recriminations. I keep telling people we don’t have eyes in the back of our head. We have eyes to go forward,” the Barbados Prime Minister said.
“Every time we lose now, it is like a cuff on the bottom of your belly. Every time we hear that we can no longer qualify for that, which we ought to have,” the Prime Minister stated.
Mottley noted that New Zealand, Australia, and England had recorded significant changes in their cricket governance.
“What is it that is needed for us to stand up and do right by cricket, lovely cricket and by the Caribbean civilization? ” She said.
“What we have found ourselves in is a predicament that is no longer sustainable and I pray that there will be the encounter between the Prime Ministerial sub-committee on cricket and the leadership of Cricket West Indies and those others who are of similar love for the game and the civilization,” Mottley told the audience that included West Indies head coaches Daren Sammy and Andre Coley.
“Our people have already voted and they have voted with their feet,” she declared, referencing the small number of spectators who turned out for the two Test matches against India in Dominica and Trinidad.
lol from time the past heads did what they did to sammy that team never did anything good by the way isn’t that an English Game? we mad at slavery but we still playing that white man game
Day peh jou ah! Koh madam la tay ay? Ek femme plus vieux passe mwe. Ek kah parley about decline abwayzan!
Today is the 87th birthday of the greatest all-rounder that ever walked the face of the earth:
Garfield St. Aubyn Sobers
The decline is in everything. We are heading to the abyss. The IPL and the love of money hasten the decline. No change will make a difference. They give it their all at IPL but are laid back when playing for the WI. They start with the WI but as soon as they are recognized internationally, they change allegiance.
I no longer watch West Indies cricket due to the poor performance and lack of talent. When we were poor and lack facilities, men were passionate about the game. After work we walked to Marchand or in other communities to the playing field for daily practice. We were proud to be part of a cricket team. There was no TV cricket, but we followed blow by blow on transistor radio. Cricketers make alot of money now playing all over the world. We need to go back to playing cricket at the primary school level and making cricket a central part of our social life.
I’m sorry to hear that the cricketing fortunes of the West Indies are in decline. It’s a sport that is so important to so many people and it’s sad to see it go down like this.