WI not in ICC Champions Trophy

NEXT week, the International Cricket Council’s Champions Trophy (ICC) tournament will commence without the West Indies.
It is a sad and depressing fact that Caribbean citizens must come to grips with, that a team that once dominated the world stage, today cannot make the cut for a prestigious tournament, but the likes of Bangladesh, with less talent maybe and a relative newcomer when compared to West Indies will be on show, while our boys compete with Afghanistan back home.
This ICC tournament is second in importance only to the Cricket World Cup. It first took place as the ICC Knock Out Tournament in 1998 and has been played every two years since. Its name was changed to the Champions Trophy in 2002, and has never been won by England, with India and Australia having won it twice each as leading winners. New Zealand, South Africa, West Indies and Sri Lanka (as co-champs with India in 2002) have also all emerged victorious. The number of teams competing has varied over the years; originally all the ICC’s full members took part, and from 2000 to 2004, associate members were also involved. But since 2009, the tournament has involved only the eight highest-ranked ODI teams as of six months prior to the tournament.
The West Indies failed to qualify for the 2017 Champions Trophy in England as they were not among the top eight ODI teams, paving the way for Bangladesh’s entry. West Indies won the World T20 last year, and this tournament will be the first time since its inception in 1998 that the Caribbean team will not be a part of a premier event – and the first time since 2006 that Bangladesh has returned.
None can deny the impact this has caused on cricket fans. Cricket is part of our identity, a rallying point of togetherness and the setting aside of our differences to be under one banner. The West Indian cricket team dates back to the 1880s, with the West Indian Cricket Board (WICB) joining the Imperial Cricket Council in 1926, and playing its first international match in 1928. This long and distinguished career predated the independence of Caribbean countries and established the foundation from which later integration efforts were built.
Today, West Indian cricket comprises a multi-national team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies. This long and storied legacy has not been without its ups and downs. Frankly, there have been expressed concerns about the direction of the WICB, given its survival and success is important to reinforcing the identity of the peoples of the Region, solidifying the unity of purpose as outlined in CARICOM and attendant institutions, and ensuring a positive reputation on the world stage.
Within recent years, the WICB and players have been experiencing various challenges, both in performance in the field and administratively. When the former T20 captain Darren Sammy, at the final of the last tournament felt compelled to publicly address what he considered to be unsavoury treatment of the players by the WICB, it was worthy of being paid attention, but instead the players were punished and isolated. What we have now is that those players with the needed skills and talent are not playing the game and instead of making progress the team has been dropping back.
Losing out on a space in the eight teams competing in the ICC Championship might be bad, but what is worst is that the West Indies is currently in a race to actually qualify for the World Cup. Everyone knows that the major problem with the West Indies team is the non-accountability of its administrators. This is a serious problem in the Caribbean at all levels of our society. While we support a separation between sport administration and politics, we do believe that a mechanism can be found whereby the WIBC can be more accountable to the Caribbean nation. The game is too vital to the nation, too broad in its reach and too central to the region’s sense of self to be left to the whims and fancies of a dozen men. We simply cannot and should not continue like that.
Ultimately something has to be done about West Indies cricket. While the administration of the game must be reviewed and reformed, perhaps revolutionized, such change by itself will not revive our fortunes. Similar energies have to be expended on creating and nurturing also a new nationalist spirit among our players.

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