ST. VINCENT-Politics and cricket collide off the pitch.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – The future direction of both the ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) and Cricket West Indies (CWI) is gaining attention here as the primary principals seek each other’s removal from their positions.

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves leads the ULP, which has been in power since 2001. The CWI is led by Dr. Kishore Shallow, who took over its leadership on March 25, 2023, from Ricky Skerritt, who had served as a government minister in St. Kitts and Nevis.

But while the phrase “politics in sports” is usually used when supporters voice their opinions regarding the composition of teams, this time around, politics and sports seem to be the order of the day in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Gonsalves is the longest-serving current head of government in the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and was also chair of the CARICOM Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Cricket. Meanwhile, Shallow is testing his political fortunes by running as a candidate for the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP).

Shallow will contest the North Leeward seat that the ULP’s Carlos James, the Tourism and Culture Minister, won by a one-seat margin in the 2020 general election. Five years earlier, James had lost to the NDP’s Roland “Patel” Matthews by 12 votes, who, before the 2020 poll, had served as the constituency’s parliamentary representative for a decade.

Gonsalves won the general election in 2020 by a 9-6 margin, and political observers say that the seat is crucial for him to retain power in the upcoming poll, widely expected to be held in November.

Following the West Indies’ embarrassing defeat on Monday in the third test against Australia in Jamaica, when the regional team was bowled out for 27 runs, the second lowest total in world cricket, Gonsalves wasted no time in calling for Shallow’s resignation and that of his entire board.

Gonsalves made the call one day after Shallow said he had expected the prime minister to do so, even as he questioned Gonsalves’ performance as head of the CARICOM Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Cricket and his government’s contribution to the sport in general here.

On July 10, two days after annual Carnival celebrations, Vincymas, Shallow commended the winners in the various categories of the festival, telling NDP supporters, “But if we are going to celebrate that Carnival that just finished, then Lord help us all.

“Lord, help us all, because it means that our standard is so low that we are going to celebrate a below-average performance by this government when it comes to Carnival.”

Not to be outdone, Gonsalves, on his weekly radio programme on the state-owned NBC Radio, replied, telling Shallow and other radio listeners, “God, really doesn’t like ugly.

“You badmouth the Carnival, say it’s the worst ever, and within days, metaphoric egg is all over your face,” he said, in direct reference to the abject batting display by the West Indies team.

Gonsalves said Shallow and the leadership of CWI “start to cuss everybody else” after the team’s embarrassing performance.

“He said, … the fault is that the governments are not putting money into cricket. The governments of the region that have put hundreds of millions of dollars into cricket, for instance, into facilities and providing support in one way or another, from school cricket right up.”

Gonsalves said he could not recall receiving a proposal from CWI to partner with the government here on any specific programme.

“I’m sure they do things with the cricket associations, which are their constituent parts, and all the rest of it. Well, to some degree.

“But given the terrible performance of Cricket West Indies over the whole period, I have to join with other leaders and other informed persons across the region to call for the resignation of the entire board of West Indies Cricket,” Gonsalves said, adding this is what should be done “for starters”.

“Let’s get a new board, and then let that new board carry out a thorough forensic inquiry about everything, including all the financial transactions of Cricket West Indies, because some things which I hear, I can’t believe, but it would be good to know.”

Prime Minister Gonsalves said that he was not saying all that he had “heard”, adding, “I’m just saying what I hear, and from some persons who are not known for hysteria.

“I’m not making any imputation of impropriety against anybody. But surely you must take full responsibility as the leadership of the West Indies Cricket Board for this debacle. It’s a humiliation of our people. If I had performed so badly in any matter, the people would have been on the streets calling for my head.”

Gonsalves said that CWI was blaming everybody but themselves, adding, “I would have thought that with a debacle like that, you would invoke the proposition to be contrite and to do what the ancient Roman Catholic religion, what the mantra they say in Latin, … mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

“Through my fault, through my most grievous fault, when you’re doing your contribution, and said, I take responsibility. Suppose you want to solve it. Say, well, but I don’t take all the blame. There’s some more blame to share, but I’m taking responsibility, and this thing is so horrendous, I can’t come and face people,” Gonsalves said.

But Shallow, in an interview with Boom FM, accepted responsibility for the team’s performance.

“I believe in accountability. So as the president of Cricket West Indies, you can’t escape responsibility for your team,” he said, telling listeners, however, that while he was “hurt” and “disappointed” by the regional team’s performance, he would not make any rash decision, such as firing the head coach or resigning from his post.

“This is, again, about people, and this is what leadership is about: being composed in these difficult situations,” Shallow said, adding that it was very easy to scapegoat in those types of situations.

“When you have situations like this, it is so easy for one to say the board,” adding that the previous day he had seen comments about the board, the head coach, the director of cricket, and the selectors.

“But no one points towards the root of the issue,” Shallow said, adding that he wanted to put things into context.

“Let’s bring this to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. How many test players has St. Vincent developed in the last 15 to 20 years? How many Vincentians are on the West Indies team for this test? Zero,” he said.

Shallow said that while Barbados-based West Indies test player Jomel Warrican is Vincentian, he has played all of his cricket in Barbados, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines cannot claim credit for his performance.

“How many Vincentian batsmen?” Shallow further said, adding that batting seems to be the problem in West Indies cricket.

“We can’t produce a batsman, one batsman in St. Vincent, from St. Vincent to play in the West Indies team right now, just using this national context.

“If you look further — and this is where the root of the issue is — nationally and say who is the next Vincentian player that could make the West Indies team, you would scratch your head for a very long time, because it’s difficult to identify any.”

Shallow said the systems and breeding ground that should be producing players for Cricket West Indies are not doing so.

“So, when the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the prime minister — because I expect him to come out … and he’s going to come out with an ego and be celebrating this in his usual disguised way.

“And he is going to come and lambaste West Indies, especially the president of Cricket West Indies, blaming him for that performance…. When he has been in government for 25 years, he cannot produce a test player because we lack local infrastructure for players to train.

“Now, how can you expect to have batsmen of international standard competing against the likes of Hazelwood, Cummins and Starc for Australia, yet you don’t have infrastructure where players could go and practice on afternoons or in the morning if rain comes.”

Shallow said that CWI owns a facility in Antigua where it brings together players that have been identified nationally, as he continued to question what Gonsalves had done as chair of the CARICOM Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Cricket.

“… people keep forgetting he was the chair of the subcommittee on cricket for many years before I became the president of Cricket West Indies,” said Shallow.

“Ask him, what did he do during that period? … He couldn’t even do anything in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, much less across the region.”

Shallow credited the former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Keith Rowley, one of Gonsalves’ successors as chair of the CARICOM committee, “who at least made an effort and had at least three meetings with Cricket West Indies.”

He said Guyana’s President, Dr. Irfaan Ali, the current chair of the committee, has reached out to CWI, offering to collaborate to establish an academy.

“Currently, President Ali is building four stadiums in Guyana that we’re going to use for cricket. What did Dr. Ralph Gonsalves do while he was the chair of that committee? What has he done for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, for cricket?”

Shallow stated that the Gonsalves government provides the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Cricket Association (SVGCA) with EC$50,000 (approximately 0.37 cents) annually, a figure that has remained unchanged for approximately 20 years.

“How can a national cricket association do anything substantial, anything significant, with no funding from the government?” Shallow said, noting that when he was president of the SVGCA, his tenure began with the group being in a deficit.

“When I left there, we had a million dollars in our account,” Swallow said.