Who is popular today?

To walk out on a cricket field or any sports field for that matter, to represent one’s country, is one of the greatest honours bestowed on the average person. So many would love and cherish the opportunity, but for any number of reasons it doesn’t come their way.
There are those who would play hard and practise seriously, but come to the conclusion that the effort is not worth the reward. Or they may realise that they’re not well enough co-ordinated to pursue a sporting career in the particular sport they’re chasing after.
Of course, there are those who recognise from early that they don’t like sports at all. Then there are the personalities that love specific sports from which they find all the enjoyment they need.
In other words, all sports and games are interesting and attract individual combinations of people who are charged emotionally in their distinctive challenges.
A cricket match which was played from April 10- 13 at the Sir Frank Worrell field at UWI SPEC in St Augustine, between the TT Red Force and Combined Campuses and Colleges Marooners, saw a Yannic Cariah, Rws Force leg-spinning all-rounder, withdraw from the game. The excuse given was “personal reasons.”
This is unacceptable.
To think that a player is chosen to represent his country and refuses to play, while giving the unsuitable and rather lame explanation of “personal reasons”! Either you’re a professional cricketer or not.
It has been happening too often in the recent past in West Indies teams.
Darren Bravo, on a tour of New Zealand some years ago, left the tour for “personal reasons.” Managers are expected to accept that. Any little thing that troubles the player, he only has to blame “personal reasons,” and the management allows him to depart.
This should not be allowed to happen. A player should state why he’s unavailable to play the game, especially when it’s his country involved.
Again, a few years ago in 2020/21, Shane Dowrich, the number-one wicket- keeper, and Kemar Roach, the number one new-ball bowler, before the second Test match in New Zealand, both left the tour for “personal reasons.” This can’t be right.
Luckily for West Indies, the deputy keeper was Joshua Da Silva, who fitted into the wicket-keeper/batsman slot with composure and self-assurance, and claimed it with poise and stability.
Just to use the imagination a bit, although it sounds silly: to examine the point, a worker in industry, or any business place for that matter, tells his boss that he won’t be at work today for “personal reasons.” And sometimes not even for one day, but for four days or more. Ridiculous!
Also, the guilty parties who use this excuse are mostly West Indian cricketers. It hardly ever happens in top-class, popular cricket-playing nations.
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The reason for that is because the authorities in modern West Indies cricket do not inculcate that sense of discipline into its players, and thus they accept whatever excuse is provided.
Actually, it’s a lack of courtesy, which is tough to accept. It’s getting out of hand.
When a hard-working cricketer like Cariah, who developed his skills at a level that impressed WI selectors, then, on his return to Trinidad from a franchise contract in Bangladesh, refuses to represent his nation for “personal reasons,” management must arrive at the conclusion that this excuse comes too easily. The weekend, before in local club cricket, he collected five for 37 and scored 49 not out.
Imagine an entertainer, just before the show, telling the promoter that he’s pulling out for “personal reasons.” He wouldn’t remain in that business for long, that’s for sure!
It would be better to fake a headache or a stomach upset or anything like that, rather than insult the fan or spectator with such an insulting remark as dropping out for “personal reasons,” especially to absent oneself from a game for one’s country.
Just what is a personal reason? A death or accident to a family member can be deemed “personal.” Yet there is nothing wrong with these reasons being made public, as fans would accept and sympathise with the player.
I wish the management of cricket in our Caribbean islands would stop accepting these wishy-washy reasons for a cricketer withdrawing from a game. Those “personal reasons” must be made public, as it is a public match, and the player made himself available for the game. End of matter.
 
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