There is an inescapably obvious constant in the perennial quarrels and contract disputes between the players of the West Indies cricket team and the body that administers the game in the Caribbean, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).

His name his Dinanath Ramnarine, a one-time leg-spinner for Trinidad and Tobago, who had a handful of mediocre performance for the West Indies and who was reincarnated as president of the West Indies Players' Association (WIPA), the trade union of regional players. In this role, Ramnarine has had a greater impact on the game than he ever had as a player - and none of it, in our view, to the better.

Current events bear out our position. In Kingstown, St Vincent, the West Indies is playing Bangladesh in a Test match, but none of this region's supposedly senior players, that is to say, the 13 initially selected for the match, are in the game. They are on strike.

Embarrassed players

On July 4, the players embarrassed not only the WICB, but the entire region, when they failed to turn up at the formal ticket sale launch in St Lucia of the ICC's World Twenty20 World Cup to be held in the Caribbean next year.

The players are demanding more pay and benefits from the WICB, and Dinanath Ramnarine, their chief spokesman and negotiator, accused the board of failing to negotiate seriously or in good faith, including on finalising the basis on which the team should be paid for the recently concluded tour to England. A perusal of available information of the offers and counter-demands for this tour is interesting.

WIPA has not disclosed its request, but the board has reported that it expected to earn US$2 million from the tour and offered to pay out US$1.48 million to the players. WIPA's counter-demands, the WICB said, would have amounted to more than US$1.9 million, which would have left little with which to administer the game in the Caribbean. And that, apparently, is not the full extent of the grab by a team whose performance over the past decade and a half, to say the least, has been sub-par.

Mediocre minstrels

Over the years, in the face of the conflicts, the constant output of our band of mostly mediocre minstrels, the West Indian cricket fan has found it easy to blame the administrators for their supposed lack of vision and failure to professionalise the management of the sport. Many committees have been appointed to suggest ways for them to improve.

What is usually missed, though, or what we have failed to question, is that the problems have persisted despite the succession of WICB presidents and CEOs, most of whom have been successful leaders in businesses and commerce and skilled in management. They have mostly failed to find accommodation with Dinanath Ramnarine and his seemingly tunnel-visioned stranglehold of WIPA and influence over the players.

In the new laissez-faire, minstrelised culture of the Caribbean in which Twenty20 may epitomise for our cricket captain our emergent space, it is probably heretical to question the compensation demands of players, or to raise with Ramnarine anything about the place of Headley or George John or Learie Constantine and their historical relationship to Gayle or Sarwan. But again, to paraphrase C.L.R. James: They know nothing, if only cricket they know.

If Ramnarine understands, he'd acknowledge that, as part of the problem, he should move on, and allow WIPA to renew itself.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.