JCA infighting hurting Jamaica's cricket

ON THE BOUNDARY with Tony Becca

Not so long ago cricket was the king of sports in this country.

It was the sport of the people, it was the sport every boy or almost every one wanted to play and it was the sport they played.

Additionally, we were good at it and it was the sport the business sector sponsored. It was the sport the people watched, almost every one of them.

Today, not so long after, cricket is no longer the king, the majority of boys no longer want to play it, the majority of the people no longer watch it.

Although we win, it has reached a stage where because of the state of West Indies cricket, victory is like a one-eyed man in a blindman's country and there is not a man willing to sponsor it, certainly not at the national level.

As we mourn the decline of cricket, we roll out many excuses for it, including the cost of playing cricket and competition from other sports, such as football and basketball.

However, that is not so, not when cricket is growing worldwide, not when the sport is now being played in well over 120 countries, including Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Greece, Brazil, and Rwanda.

The problem, the main problem facing cricket in Jamaica is the Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA).

Allowed to stagnate

For too long, cricket has been allowed to stagnate in Jamaica with no one even attempting to move it along - to market it and sell it. People in cricket behaved, in the 1980s, in the 1990s and at the turn of century, as if cricket was still the number one sport in Jamaica, as it was in the 1930s, 1940s and the 1950s.

Apparently, and mistakenly, they still believed that cricket was still the number one or the only sport, in Jamaica.

Competitive cricket in Jamaica started in 1897 with the Senior Cup, involving clubs like Kingston, Kensington, Melbourne, Lucas, and Garrison. Yet, it was not until 1990 that the competition was open to include teams from rural Jamaica.

With all that, however, cricket was never in the state that it is today.

In earlier days, for example, when sponsorship became the order of the day, the JCA had no trouble in getting sponsorship and as far as the actual cricket was concerned, there was more cricket.

The club league lasted for 14 rounds, home and away, and there was also a limited-over competition with each club playing the other once.

Today, the JCA cannot, for some three or four years now, find a sponsor for its club competitions and may be that is why club cricket, the nation's top competition, lasts for under two months, for seven rounds, and why the limited-over competition is played on a knockout basis, which means, for example, that half of the teams play one match, half of the rest play two, and so on.

Last sponsorship

The last sponsorship the JCA acquired was $10 million in 2009 for a Twenty20 tournament and the competition was a flop.

Some members of the teams invited to participate were old, forgotten players, and because it was a knockout tournament, some of the money was spent outfitting teams which played only one match.

Apart from the fact that so little club cricket affects the development of players and therefore the performance of the national team, the less cricket that is played, the less the impact of the game on the people; and the less impact the game has on the people, the less important it will be to them.

The less important the game is to the people, the more the business sector stays away from the game.

Cricket needs sponsorship and whether those in cricket like it or not, the cold reality is that business people only get involved in sponsoring a sport which they see as a failure if they feel generous; if they want to give away a few dollars.

For cricket to improve, for cricket to attract more players, for cricket to get the support of the people, and for cricket to get the support of sponsors, the JCA, the people responsible for running the game, must change their ways.

While cricket suffers from the lack of sponsorship and from the quality of players, the situation in the JCA, to quote Robert Bryan, the latest of the CEOs, "is like a tribal war".

Factions

In the JCA, one man wants to stay on as president and one wants to be the president. There are two factions: those on the side of president Paul Campbell and those on the side of first vice-president Linden Wright. They each have a slate of candidates, they both use every opportunity to smear each other and before the next election, or on the day of the next election, all hell threatens to break lose.

The Wright side accuses Campbell of incompetence and all sorts of things leading to his losing three CEOs since he took office two years ago, of losing a treasurer, a secretary, and a member of his finance committee, on top of losing many staff in that time.

The annual general meeting has been postponed two times - in November and in February - because of problems with accounts and to date, a new date is still to be set.

The Campbell followers have accused Wright and his side of doing everything possible to stall the JCA and its plans and programmes.

The more the "tribal war" continues, the less likely that cricket will attract sponsors. In fact, in his own words, that is one of the reasons why Bryan decided to go.

Bryan, who was employed to market Jamaica's cricket, to sell the JCA and to get money for the JCA, said that "nobody trusts the JCA".

What is happening inside the JCA cannot be allowed to continue and what is needed urgently, now that the JCA is concerned more with an election than the state of cricket in the land, is for the clubs and parishes, the affiliates of the JCA, to gather, discuss the matter and find a solution that will protect cricket.

No one is bigger than the game. Cricket is a gentleman's game and the affiliates should come together and decide who, in their opinion, from among the fraternity, is best suited to lead Jamaica's cricket.