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THE EDITOR: At the opening ceremony of the Caricom Cricket Conference in Port of Spain last month, Prime Minister Rowley, chairman of the region’s Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Cricket, is reported as saying that “we do not intend to give up on cricket. We intend to defend cricket and we intend to play cricket at the highest level, and we will get back to the top.”
When this committee was established in July 2023, Caricom chairman Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister of Dominica, suggested that it was assigned the task of reporting on ways to better “position the game in the Caribbean so that we could come back to the glorious days.”
The fact that this regional cricket committee has been chaired in the past by the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, and former prime minister of Grenada, Dr Keith Mitchell, may suggest another fact – that Caricom as a political entity has “struggled" in the last 15 years, if not more, to find a formula which resonates with a successful revitalisation of the region’s premier sport.
No doubt Caricom’s library is perhaps the repository of more reports and proposals on West Indian cricket revival than the number of sixes struck so far at the exciting Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024.
But the question is this: Are we intellectualising the approach to revisiting the “glory" days? Surely there is a need for a rational, organisational and methodological line of attack, or defence, but sometimes answers to the cricketing challenge may lie just in front of the wicket. Yet every so often we tend to stay behind the crease and lose out on taking advantage of opportunities that are delivered to us, waiting to be pounced upon.
Consider for a moment that the most valuable player (MVP), so far, at the IPL is West Indian Sunil Narine. This is the most coveted, decorated and prestigious award in a playing arena of the world’s best. For the entirety of the tournament, Narine has stolen cricketing headlines on both traditional and new social media.
In fact, the international cricketing buzz for the last several weeks was whether Narine would reconsider his previously announced retirement and return to batting and bowling for West Indian heart and soul.
Narine’s display for Kolkata Knight Riders this season has been described as extraordinary, and has even encouraged West Indies T20 captain Rovman Powell to make a compelling case for him to come out of retirement and represent the West Indies in the upcoming ICC Men's T20 World Cup, being hosted by the West Indies and the US.
From my vantage point in the spectators’ pavilion, this World Cup tournament represents a significant opportunity for the stimulation, revitalisation and restoration of West Indian cricketing pride and prestige. And should Narine be persuaded to return, to bolster the regional team’s chances at this global competition, it may very well be the impetus and motivation which drives, pushes and perhaps ignites the spark of West Indian cricketing hearts.
My recommendation is a simple one. Caricom should make an open call for Narine to rethink and reconsider his decision in the interest of Caribbean honour and nationalistic pride.
Such a call is not without sporting precedent.
In 2015, Sri Lanka's sports minister urged then world number one batsman Kumar Sangakkara to reconsider plans to retire from Test cricket and encouraged him to “render his service to the country for another one-year period." And in 2016, the president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, made a personal intervention over superstar Lionel Messi’s decision to retire from international football.
In the interest of international cricket, it may be the right thing to do. For Caricom’s aspirations of rejuvenated sporting glory, it may be the politically correct thing to do. And for Sunil Narine himself, a return may be the patriotic thing to do.
David Rudder sums it up eloquently in the well-known cricketing anthem Rally 'Round the West Indies: “This is not just cricket, this thing goes beyond the boundary.”

ASHVANI MAHABIR

Cunupia
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