BU extends commiseration to the Barbados Under-17 CONCACAF Championship football team who was given a drubbing by Canada 8-0, Canada was the more professional outfit if we accept the report from Frank Gill, manager of the Barbados team. Some will say they did well to have qualified for the tournament, a generous assessment.
We continue to fool ourselves we can prepare local teams to compete creditably on the world stage using an amateur approach. Can anyone answer why Minister Ronald Jones who heads one of the most important ministries continues to be President of the Barbados Football Association (BFA)? If a plausible answer can be found, can anyone articulate then what have been the achievements of the BFA under his stewardship? Has Prime Minister Fruendel Stuart like his predecessor given his blessing to Jones’ Jack Warner twin-style approach?
Local sport is in a sorry state. Although bedevilled by a lack of resources there is also a lack of leadership. Many of the local sports associations have become the playground of political aspirants or the plain ignorant. How many local leaders of sports associations can articulate a short or medium term vision? Instead all we get is squabbling among executive members and sometimes others on the periphery. We may have indeed become educated fools.
The most recent controversy precipitated by the dropping of Tino Best from Barbados national cricket team is yet another example of the supine disposition of local sports administrators. There is a myth circulating in Barbados that because an individual was great at the sport he or she represented the same acumen should chase them when they assume an administrative role. It is BU’s opinion the Barbados Cricket Association is currently being affected by such thinking. While holding no brief for Tino Best whose disciplinary record makes it easy to label him unkindly, why would the BCA drop one of its best bowlers without ensuring there is a solid position to defend? This week we learned the BCA had to eat humble pie and reinstate Best to the team. How can the BCA which is charged with administering cricket in Barbados garner, no pun intended, the required respect from all stakeholders given the handling of the Best matter? Was Best suspended for one game and if so why was he left out of the team after serving a one match suspension ?
Another view of the Tino Best BCA saga is the biases demonstrated by local sports commentators and cricket officials. For example, it is no secret Joel Garner, the current member of the BCA, does not hold Andrew Mason, a leading cricket commentator in high esteem. This means that Garner will not be caught dead on the popular Mason & Best show on Voice of Barbados (VoB) formerly Best & Mason of Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) fame. Keith Holder on the other hand appears to have the inside track on cricket news in Barbados and one wonders if it has something to do with President of the BCA Joel Garner and himself being Foundation School old scholars. They are others we can finger but would it make a difference? What we have are people managing the BCA who are not competent administrators. We have an impotent media whose modus operandi is to reflect their biases by suppressing BCA’s ‘dirty laundry’.
On a related note it was refreshing to listen to economist Clyde Mascoll speaking to cricket issues on the revamped cricket program Mason & Best this week. By identifying how society has shifted its cricket focus from cultural to being business driven, one is better able to understand why incompetent unqualified BCA administrators are falling short. To effectively manage cricket in Barbados at this juncture in our history will call for an appreciation for how Barbados society has changed in the last 25 years.
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