Tony Becca, Contributing Editor
TWO SATURDAYS ago, Richard Gayle, the new president of Melbourne Cricket Club, called on the West Indies Board to offer financial assistance to clubs in the region, all of which, like Melbourne, are suffering and fighting to survive, most of which, as Gayle emphasised, may not survive much longer unless the SOS call is answered.
Gayle's call at the club's annual awards dinner is nothing new, however. It is a call that has been made before.
The interesting thing about the call this time, however, was that Jackie Hendriks, president of the Jamaica Cricket Association and a member of the West Indies Board, not only supported it while bringing greetings to the club on behalf of the JCA. He also promised to encourage the WICB to positively answer the call.
EXPECTATIONS
According to Hendriks, the clubs have a right to expect some assistance from the board for the simple reason, as Gayle had said, that it is the clubs that produce West Indies players and therefore deserve something in return.
As the body that controls West Indies cricket, it is the board that makes money out of the West Indies team, and regardless of what board presidents, past and present, and board members, also past and present, believe, commonsense suggests that unless the feeder is fed the feeder will eventually die, and if that happens, so will West Indies cricket.
According to some presidents and some board members, the board is not obligated to assist the clubs for the simple reason that clubs are formed by people who love cricket and who want to play the game, and that, as it was in the good old days, they should continue to fund themselves.
The reasoning, it is understood, is that no one should expect the board to fund the entertainment, the enjoyment of people.
If that is so, then something is really wrong with the board's thinking with a set of people who continue to talk about spreading the game and encouraging young people to play the game.
Apart from the fact that money is provided for development in any business and that the clubs are vital to development in cricket, times have changed in the over 100 hundred years since clubs in the West Indies came into existence.
SOCIETY'S BEST
In those days cricket clubs attracted society's best and most affluent, the members paid dues and were the ones who played, those involved with running the game were volunteers, the players, the West Indies players, were not paid, and the only money made from the game was through gate receipts.
That, however, is not so today.
Today, the social situation is such that cricket clubs no longer attract the affluent in the society, the members who pay dues have been getting fewer, WICB members collect out of pocket expenses, the WICB has a large and well paid staff, the players are well paid, and money comes into the board not only from gate receipts but also from sponsorship and television rights.
Right now, it is a few who are keeping the clubs going or attempting to keep them going, and those who are doing so no longer play the game. In fact, some of them never played the game, and as any club executive will confirm, some of the few are now asking why should their dues, why should the little money raised from fund-raising events through their efforts be spent entirely on cricket when, regardless of who they produce, regardless of how much money West Indies cricket makes, the clubs get nothing from it.
In an age when cricket is professional and is big business, that makes sense. Why, really, should members of a club go into their pockets to support the club so that it can produce great players for the West Indies when the club gets nothing in return - when what happens to the club does not matter to the West Indies board?
Right now, the five big cricket clubs in Jamaica Kingston, to an extent, Melbourne, Kensington, Lucas and St. Catherine are suffering, and although four of them, Kingston, Melbourne, Kensington and Lucas, have produced the vast majority of Jamaica's West Indies representatives, no one seems to care.
The time has come for the board to understand that times have changed that the clubs no longer have the type of membership they used to have, that the vast majority of the membership are young people who cannot afford to pay dues, and that because of the growth of other sports, because of the number of national teams and the need to support them, because of the growing need for support for other things in the society, it is more difficult these days to get private sector support.
FINDING A WAY
That is why the clubs need whatever support the board can afford, and if it is really interested in West Indies cricket, it should find a way to help.
The West Indies board is not rich, but the money it has should be used to keep the game alive.
Some of the board's money should be used to pay the players, some of it should be used for administration, some of it should be used for spreading the game and for development, and out of that amount something should go to the clubs.
