Sir Beckles: Sammy and Taylor No Ordinary Leaders!

Vice Chancellor of The University of the West Indies, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, has hailed Sunday’s double win by the West Indies men’s and women’s teams in the global T20 cricket tournament, saying it has restored the region to “a pinnacle of global cricket leadership.” “By winning World Cups in the coveted, cash rich T20 format, West Indians, bursting with passion, proved to the world of critics without compassion that they are advocates of a sophisticated civilization perfectly ready for winning performances in the pressurized global space that seeks to marginalize our small states,” Sir Hilary said in a letter to media editors.

“Our women and men have sent a powerful message into the universe,” he added.

Sir Hilary went on: “2016 is the epitome of a long, hard journey to justice. From 1886, when the West Indies team was invented and went on its first tour that year to Canada and the USA, to 1927 when it received Test status, to 1950/1 when it ended England’s rule and moved on to challenge Australia for the World Test title, to 1978 to 1995, when it dominated first the Test nest and then the One Day International (ODI) arena, to this day, 130 years later, West Indies cricket has been surrounded by mentalities lacking in generosity and scientific observation.”

“This mind,” the top regional academic said, was now represented by English writer/commentator Mark Nicholas whose comment that the West Indies team lacked brains triggered a strong rebuke from T20 captain Darren Sammy who said it only served to inspire the team to greatness.

Said Sir Hilary: “Commenting upon our loss of Test dominance, Nicholas says that he sees nothing in West Indian society to indicate that the team has any further leadership role. He concludes that so intellectually backward and bankrupt is Caribbean culture that our golden years of dominance in Tests and ODIs should best be described as a ‘fluke’.”

“As he and his cohort watched the Windies rise [on Sunday] and take control of the T20 game, in much the same way that they did Tests and ODIs a generation ago, it is unlikely that he reflected upon the miserable nature of his musings. The jaundiced mind sees no light in space even in the face of the blazing sun, but the trail speaks for itself.”

Sir Hilary, an ardent enthusiast of the game, underscored that no other cricket nation, except the West Indies, has dominated all versions of the cricket game. “Nicholas might wish to take this fact into his festival of folly,” he said.

Sir Hilary went on: “Captains Sammy and Taylor are no ordinary leaders. With their players drawn from a nation of post-colonial citizens, they stood against teams from countries with populations and gross domestic products thousands of times larger, and proceeded to mobilize their mentality that knows no boundaries.

“A young woman [Hayley Matthews] and a young man [Carlos Brathwaite], both debutantes, green behind their ears in the maroon wear, allowed their imaginations to run away with them. In their flight, they took the game with them. They had the audacity and the nerve to be bold and courageous, and to say to the old foes ‘We are West Indies’ in a fashion only David Rudder knows best.”

Sir Hilary contended that British Prime Minister David Cameron’s call on Caribbean people to forget their collective history, made in response to the region’s campaign for reparations as compensation for colonialism and slavery, and to move along, had something to do with the resurgence of West Indies cricket.

“And this is why we have The University of the West Indies that stood elevated, again, as Brathwaite, its student and captain of the Cave Hill cricket team, raised to excellence within its faculty and the Combined Campuses and Colleges culture, dug deep into our past and came up with an intellectual answer for the future,” said Sir Hilary, referring Brathwaite’s masterful batting display in the final over when he struck four consecutive sixes to pilot the West Indies to victory over a visibly demoralized England.

“All that is now required s for the WICB, president and directors, to complete the over. There are two balls left to face, one is to accept the governance reform that calls for the Council of Stakeholders as set out in the Patterson Report, and the other is to recognize that by accepting the governance interdependence of cricket and society is not to lose autonomy,” Sir Hilary said.

“The players have done their job on the field. It is now for the president, whose heart resides in cricket as much as any one of us, to do his and lead his board boldly into the rest of the decade with public support and popular legitimacy.”

“Without this reform,” Sir Hilary warned, “West Indies runs the risk of being razed to the ground by internal conflict and acrimony. The golden monument we have all built as a tribute to our cultural tenacity and collective wisdom must come first. This is your task, Mr President. It’s a duty of your generation.”

– Barbados Today