Cricket in crisis

Cricket in Jamaica faces a potential crisis. The magnitude of this dilemma is huge, and the implications could be long-lasting. If this issue is not addressed soon, cricket in Jamaica will suffer in the short term. All this struck me while I was watching the SDC 20/20 final in Westmoreland last weekend.

Think about this. The winner of the all-island SDC 20/20 competition will, this year, take home a whopping $750,000, up from $500,000 last year. The winners of the Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) Senior Cup this year were Manchester. They took home the princely sum of $200,000! The math is easy. The winners of the all- island 20/20 community cricket competition will take home more than half a million dollars more than the winners of the Senior Cup competition. The JCA may not know it yet, but the possibility of a conflict between the two competitions is real.

In the SDC competition, no community team can have more than two so-called elite players. That is, two players who would have played parish cricket less than two years before. Schoolboys, it must be noted, are not affected by this rule. A community with half a dozen parish players, therefore, (and I know several such communities) has a real problem in deciding which two to play.

What is now being actively considered in a lot of these communities is for players to stop playing parish or club cricket altogether, in order to give themselves the chance to play for their community.

I have had this discussion with several such players and they are serious about it. Indeed, some have already stopped playing parish or senior cup cricket. After two years of not being a parish player, the cricketer will now be fully eligible to play for his community in the all-island 20/20 competition. The community with five or six such players will now have a much better chance of winning the huge prize money of three quarter of a million dollars on offer.

Who can blame the cricketer who makes such a decision? The persons playing parish cricket now are mostly people who feel they have a genuine chance of representing Jamaica or the dwindling few who still like to play good competitive cricket. If a cricketer feels his chances of playing for Jamaica are not good, or - in the case of an older player - have gone, parish or club cricket no longer holds much thrill for him. When the prize money of winning a community competition is almost four times what it is to win an all-island parish competition, the cricketer who chooses to play for community rather than parish is making an easy decision.

Less hassle

Apart from the possibility of greater financial reward, the fact is that playing for one's community often presents less hassle to the average cricketer as opposed to playing for your parish or club in the Senior Cup. Playing for your parish or Senior Cup club usually involves a lot more travel for both practice and matches. Besides, these 20/20 are far better attended and have far greater atmosphere than matches in the Senior Cup.

The reality, then, is that SDC 20/20 community cricket is far more lucrative than the JCA's top competition. The 20/20 is easier for the cricketer in terms of travel and 20/20 is usually played in front of energy-filled spectators as opposed to the few faithful gazers in the Senior Cup. If the JCA doesn't find a way to make Senior Cup cricket more attractive, Jamaica's cricket will suffer in a major way in the short term.

The hardcore parish cricketer who plays weekly just for the love of it may well become a thing of the past. One obvious solution is for the SDC competition not to have the restriction on these parish players for their community teams and, therefore, allow a community to play all of its 'elite' players once it can be established that the players are actually from the community. That, however, is something the SDC has resisted from start, with the argument that they wanted to include the 'bramble' players as well and to spread the games gospel to all and sundry.

This, of course, does not affect the players who come from communities where there are not too many parish or Senior Cup players, but cricket in Jamaica is very much a regional thing. Some communities play serious cricket, some don't. Those who play serious cricket will have players in the Senior Cup competition, and it is these players who are now deciding whether it is better for them to play for parish or community.

The dilemma is real. Cricket in Jamaica stands to lose if something is not done, and done very soon.

Orville Higgins is a sports journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.