LASANA LIBURD tries to remember South Africa 2010
 
Who was the top player at the South Africa 2010 World Cup?
Who won the Golden Boot?
What continent faced two penalty shoot-outs in the knockout phase of the competition?
What teams felt the brunt of recent FIFA Players of the Year Lionel Messi (2009), Cristiano Ronaldo (2008) and Kaka (2007)?
ANSWERS: Uruguayan striker Diego Forlan, who does the business at Spanish club Atletico Madrid but has never been considered an ‘A’ lister, was adjudged the World Cup’s outstanding individual player. German winger Thomas Mueller took the prize for the most goals by virtue of playing in fewer games than the other three players who also scored five times in the competition.
South America’s Uruguay and Paraguay triumphed in shoot-outs over Ghana and Japan respectively. And Messi and Kaka returned home without getting on the score sheet in South Africa while Ronaldo’s lone item, the final goal of a 7-0 rout for Portugal against North Korea , was so comical and clumsy in its execution that he shrugged his shoulders and refused to celebrate.
Oh, so you got all that huh? Bet your memories don’t last another month.
Surely not since Italia 1990 has a World Cup failed so miserably to catch alight-and even then there was the marvellous Cameroon team to whet our appetites as the “Indomitable Lions” stormed through to the quarter-finals.
Spain were undoubtedly the best team at this year’s competition and worthy winners just as the Germans were 20 years ago. But the World Cup is about more than the trophy. If it were not, who would hop out of bed at absurd hours to watch match-ups like Chile versus Honduras or Cameroon against Japan?
The World Cup is as much about the surprise packages as it is about the stand-outs seeking immortality. It is about classic clashes and heroes and villains.
As majestic as Diego Maradona was en route to Argentine glory in 1986, his triumph would surely be diminished if not for the stunning contributions from the bit actors like Mexico’s Manuel Negrete, USSR’s Vladimir Bessonov, Brazil’s Josimar and Denmark’s Michael Laudrup as well as the stylish team play of the French and the unsinkable spirit of the Germans; Batman needs his Joker and Spain suffered for lack of a suitable dance partner.
Let’s give credit where it is due, though, because South Africa, the first African nation to host the showpiece tournament, delivered a fine competition without too much fuss. Almost a dozen journalists were robbed at gunpoint, a few participating teams returned to their hotels to discover that they had been relieved of earthly possessions while chaos at one airport meant that thousands of Dutch and German fans missed a semi-final date. Quite unpleasant occurrences for those involved but still far short of the murder and mayhem predicted by some members of the foreign press.
If South Africa had a self-inflicted black eye then it was the vuvuzelas-long plastic instruments that deliver a harsh, monotonous - for want of a better word - tune.
While 1986 World Cup introduced the “Mexican wave,” 1978 was memorable for swirling confetti at kick-offs and Germany 2006 launched the popular “fan zones,” it is a shame that an African nation famed for its musical tradition built by choirs like the Soweto Gospel Choir and jazz artistes like Hugh Masakela will be remembered for a musical instrument of such dubious merit that air plugs sold by the thousands at World Cup venues.
It was not the worse note of the World Cup, though. As usual, FIFA would not be beaten on that one thanks to the adidas Jabulani. The Jabulani follows in the tradition of governing football bodies allowing their sponsor to introduce a new ball-the most important equipment in the game-on the eve of the competition to boost sales rather than help the competition. The result was a plethora of complaints and just three goals direct from free-kicks for the duration of the tournament despite the presence of an array of dead-ball specialists like Ronaldo, Wesley Sneijder, Dani Alves, David Villa, Didier Drogba, Robin Van Persie and Juan Veron.
The debate on the introduction of technological aids to football was again brought to the fore by Frank Lampard’s disallowed effort in England’s second round loss to Germany or Carlos Tevez’s unjust opening goal in Argentina’s triumph over Mexico in the same round. But FIFA made their reputation by creating problems, not solving them so expect that discussion to continue.
Thankfully, there were a handful of individual and team performances that made viewers sit up or even leap off the sofa.
Netherlands captain Giovanni Van Bronkhorst provided my most vivid memory of South Africa with an outrageous left-footed strike from distance against Uruguay in the semi-final. The ball flew into the far corner with the single-minded persistence of a smart missile and invoked memories of the old black-and-white chequered spheres that begged to be hit and never deviated from their intended targets.
Tevez’s second strike for Argentina against Mexico was from the same school of brutal intent while Yasuhito Endo’s brilliant curling free-kick for Japan against Denmark was another rare victory for adidas.

South Africa’s lively left winger Siphiwe Tshabala capped a promising opening display with the first goal of the World Cup against Mexico but Group A was more memorable for Forlan’s brilliant individual performances at the tip of Uruguay’s midfield diamond and the spectacular implosion of the French squad who did everything they could to disgrace their nation short of misplacing their kit.
Nigeria ended bottom of Group B but their goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama was one of the competition’s best showmen. The failure of African nations to build on Cameroon’s exciting 1990 adventure means that Enyeama’s best chance of silverware and lasting status must come in the European domestic game and one hopes that he has caught the eye of attendant club managers-get your cheque book out Monsieur Arsene Wenger!
There were rumoured to be football matches in Group C too but England were not in the mood and a late Landon Donovan winner for the United States over Algeria was as exciting as it got-unless you counted English goalkeeper Robert Green’s memorable fumble that allowed the USA’s Clint Dempsey an equalizer.
Not much to report in Group E and F either. Japanese midfielder Keisuke Honda gave some stately performances but defending champions Italy were embarrassing while Netherlands progressed despite playing as little football as possible.
Germany and Ghana did not entirely convince in Group D although they saved their best for the knock-out stages. Brazilian fans hoped that the “Samba Boys” had also kept something in reserve as they progressed comfortably through Group G but with a distinct shortage of style while Spain survived an opening defeat to Switzerland to top Group H.
Ghanaian striker Asamoah Gyan was an enterprising mixture of skill, industry and strength as he dragged the African nation into the final eight but he lost his nerve against Uruguay. Gyan failed to punish a handled ball by Luis Suarez from the spot and looked on in awe as Sebastian “El Loco” Abreu scored one of the cheekiest lofted penalties ever seen at this level to send the only African team left in the fray packing.
By the final week of the tournament, Messi, Kaka and Ronaldo-not to mention Argentina’s controversial rookie coach, Maradona-had already left South Africa without the desired impact.
Then, at a most opportune time, Spain recovered their poise as they faced the fresh-faced Germans in the semi-final. Spain’s patient performance married technique to intelligence as they passed Germany to death and they were unlikely to be trumped when they met the Netherlands in the final.
It was a third World Cup final for the Dutchmen but there was little of the invention that had characterized their 1974 and 1978 teams. Sneijder is one the world’s best passers at present and winger Arjen Robben is certainly a handful but they lacked support and were never going to beat Spain by fair means.
The Netherlands did have their chances-not least, when Robben, released by Sneijder, was thwarted by an outstretched boot from Spain captain and goalkeeper Iker Casillas. But the thuggish behaviour of Mark Van Bommell and Nigel De Jong was unworthy of World champions and pint-sized midfielder Andres Iniesta eventually delivered the telling blow for Spain in stoppage time.
So, Spain seduced South Africa . But around them, for the most part, mediocrity reigned.
 
My World Cup All-Stars
Vincent Enyeama (Nigeria); Maicon (Brazil), Gerald Pique (Spain), Lucio (Brazil), Carlos Salcido (Mexico); Bastian Schweinsteiger (Germany), Xavi (Spain), Wesley Sneider (Netherlands); Thomas Mueller (Germany), Diego Forlan (Uruguay); David Villa (Spain).
 
My Flops
Robert Green (England); Jonas Gutierrez (Argentina), Jamie Carragher (England), Fabio Cannavaro (Italy), Roto Ziegler (Switzerland); Dani Alves (Brazil), Frank Lampard (England), Franck Ribery (France); Wayne Rooney (England), Fernando Torres (Spain), Jon Dahl Tomasson (Denmark).

By OWEN THOMPSON

Spain captain Iker Casillas lifts the World Cup trophy as the team parades in Madrid on July 12, 2010. Spain won the World Cup after defeating the Netherlands 1-0. —Photo: AP

On June 19 last, at the latest meeting of European leaders to discuss the gruelling recession facing the EU, Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero banged his fist on the table, after the umpteenth insinuation from German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, about the financial instability of Spain and the danger this constituted to the stability of the euro, the Eurozone and the entire EU, in the light of the Greek collapse and growing speculation about Spain and Portugal going the same way.
Prime Minister Zapatero had had enough. Too much had been said, irresponsibly in his opinion, about the economic plight of his country. Furthermore, too much had been said by influential economic journals and thinkers (of a certain ideological persuasion). Most of all, too much had been insinuated by Chancellor Merkel herself. Zapatero was visibly annoyed as he moved for the EU to perform stringent, objective Stress Tests on a conglomerate of European banks. This would show, he stated, exactly what state of health the Spanish banking system was in, what state of health other European banks were in, and the degree of confidence that could be had in the Spanish economy.
Two days later, on June 21st, “La Roja”, The Red Brigade, as the Spanish World Cup football team was being called (its official shirt colours are red), began the reactivation of its World Cup chances after its embarrassing 0-1 defeat in the opening game against Switzerland. It got past Honduras 2-0, less brilliantly than the Spanish nation might have liked, but the job was done. Four days later, on June 25th, La Roja got the better of Chile 2-1, to top its group and progress to the final 16. The Spanish nation started to think again, after the blip against Switzerland, that La Roja’s pre-tournament billing as one of the favourites was justified after all. Stern tests against all the traditional giants – European and South American – awaited La Roja if it were to make the Spanish nation believe the dream.
Meanwhile, in the grim corridors of EU political power, subject to stiff financial and economic examination from hostile examiners predisposed to show just how much, and how badly, the Spanish economy had been mismanaged by a foolhardy Zapatero in the midst of a crisis that had hit everyone very hard (the liberal conservative governments that dominate the EU have been similarly hit), Zapatero ploughed on, determined to face stress tests, liberal-conservative criticism, trade union strike threats, and the full force of the most hostile liberal conservative artillery. European leaders acceded to his request and the mechanisms were put into place for such stress tests to be carried out.
A month later, on Friday July 23rd, the results of those stress tests were made public. Not only did Spanish banks emerge with flying colours, they were also shown to be among the most resilient in Europe - better off than many of their French and German counterparts. Twelve days earlier, on Sunday 11th July, La Roja had beaten Holland, to make Spain Champions of the World for the first time. Their path towards glory included a particularly sweet semi-final victory  over whom? … None other than Germany! The Euro 2008 victory against the Germans in Austria was no flash in the pan.

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

That night, back in July 2008, millions of Spaniards had taken to the streets to celebrate, wearing red, shouting that their country had finally become one of the giants of Europe. On their way to that Euro 2008 triumph, they had also dealt with another traditional European powerhouse, Italy. Their game had been crisp, characterised by sweetly orchestrated passing, most pleasant to behold. Today, two years later, in the heart of southern Africa, La Roja had had to deal with Dutchmen, who, rather than crisp, flying and Cruyff-like, were rough and aggressive, bent on demolition rather than seduction. La Roja came out worthy winners, having chosen to trust in their seductive talents and play football. The entire Spanish nation rejoiced. Not only was Spain one of the giants of Europe; it also was, undoubtedly, one of the giants of the world.
The magnitude of Prime Minister Zapatero’s challenge remains. It has always been easy, within European geo-eco-political dynamics to brand Spain a lesser nation. As a matter of course. As a matter of right. As a matter of might. It will always be less than England, France, Italy and Germany. The economic reality has been particularly harsh to it over the last few years. Zapatero has inherited the very worst of the economic backlog that stems from the reality of history. Spain simply doesn’t have the strength of the industrial fabric inherent to England, Germany, France and Italy. The prosperity it experienced in the late 80s and 90s sprang from an extremely gloated construction boom. A lot of disguised wealth was perceived in brick and concrete and the service sectors. A whole generation, lured by the easy and quick wealth it afforded, saw no point in sweating for the highest academic qualifications. They sensed, and found, easy wealth in the construction and service sectors, and spin-offs.
The years of the last conservative government, (1996-2004) were glorified by the economic boom of that era. Zapatero’s tenure in office since 2004 has been marked by the end of the easy wealth, (2006-2008) then the collapse of the world’s financial system. So many of those who had gained easy wealth in the height of the construction boom era were immediately affected when it came to an abrupt end. With no solid qualifications, they had little to fall back on. At the same time that the entire country was forced to come face to face with the harsh, unpleasant reality of Spain’s fragile industrial fabric. Many of the hundreds of thousands who, without qualifications, had found easy unemployment during the years of the last conservative government, between 1996 and 2004, now joined the ranks of the unemployed and the unemployable. Since the collapse of the financial system, the unemployment figure in Spain has soared to four and a half million (just over 20%) of the labour force. A startling figure compared to other European countries, also hit by that collapse.
The liberal conservative forces and the Spanish right, in opposition, have lavishly accused Zapatero of dilapidating the prosperity left him by their party after they lost power in 2004. Easy demagoguery in a country where unemployment is rising, and where there is more and more pressure from all of Europe for Zapatero to do what liberal-conservative manuals demand to arrest the crisis. No overhaul of the system. Of course not. Leave that to Obama. In the meantime, what has been done by Messieurs Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Cameron and Merkel has altered precious little in France, Italy, Britain and Germany. So when Zapatero was forced, in mid-May, to go before Parliament and announce massive cuts in so many of the previously untouchable areas of his socialist agenda – public servants’ salaries, pensions, unemployment benefits etc, as he had been ordered to do by a liberal-conservative dominated Ecofin (roughly the Council of EU Finance Ministers) - the Spanish right had a field day. How grossly mismanaged the Spanish economy has been by this foolhardy socialist!
As the spring wore on, and the summer set in, and the rumours grew about the stability and solvency of the Spanish economy and financial and banking system, (rumours conveniently fuelled, among others, by Angela Merkel herself), there finally came the day when Zapatero, on June 19th, banged his fist on the table and said “Enough is enough!” More or less at the same time that La Roja was saying to itself “Enough is enough! Let’s start playing football like we know we can. Free and flowing! Free of inhibitions and manufactured pressures from without. Let’s go out there and show all what La Roja is capable of. Let’s show all the true dimension of the football proposal the Spanish nation wishes to make to the world!”
The members of La Roja must have also been spurred by what they had seen of those who were likely to be their major obstacles towards glory. They must have seen how the French self destructed and how the Italians virtually never turned up. They must have seen that the Germans, though trying to offer something new, were still not quite there.

Spain

They must have seen how lost the Brazilians were in their own sorry schizophrenia – the game the players wanted to play, the game the trainer was forcing them to play, which is foreign to their nature, and the game the world was wanting and expecting them to play; schizophrenia which resulted in their brand of football this time around being an insipid hybrid which made them fall easy prey to rough Dutchmen.
They must have seen how Saint Diego, for all his awesome fire power upfront, so dreadfully overlooked proper co-ordination of the Argentinean midfield. They must have seen all that and said to themselves. “Okay, well, we might have lost to Switzerland, but that will be our only blip this time around. Thank God it came that early, when things could still be remedied. But we are the freest, most flowing, least apprehensive team on show.”
La Roja was, indeed, a new voice within European staleness, being called upon by history to point a new way. It rose to the occasion. England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Holland simply had nothing more to offer. The rest is now history.
Once La Roja got past Portugal in the last 16, and once Brazil were kicked out by Holland in the last 8, there was no one in Spain that doubted who was going to win the first World Cup to be staged on African soil. Pujol’s header against Germany became a remarkable symbol for so many Spaniards. “We outplayed the Germans on the ground, with our feet, but couldn’t get through, because they are Germans, so we had to use our head.” In the same way that Mr Zapatero, fed up of liberal-conservative rhetoric and of Angela Merkelian innuendo, banged his fist on the table, after mild-mannered protest and well structured arguments systematically came up against orchestrated, intentioned hostility.
The Germans were outplayed, though not outscored. It is a handy tactic against economic and political adversaries domestically and on the EU stage. Not only must the adversary be outplayed, a way must also be found to outscore him, especially if one firmly believes in the quality of one’s own artillery.
Then came the Dutch, all fouls and rough play. Until Iniesta’s late strike, at the end of a well crafted team move. As the ball entered the net in the 114th minute and the Dutch saw red, the explosion in the Iberian peninsular could be heard as far north as Berlin or Amsterdam.
I was in Seville on the night of the final, in the heart of southern Spain, in the deepest entrails of Andalusia. I was in a bar specially equipped with a big screen for the occasion, surrounded by scores of Spaniards, on a very warm summer’s night (as were scores of similar bars throughout Seville and in every village, town and city across Spain) when the explosion came.
As the game ended, and I began my walk back to my hotel, all around me there was a sea of red.

By IVAN CHARLES

At 6.30 am on Saturday 3rd July 2010, the Corkie’s Casuals Fraternity along with specially invited cyclists and supporters embarked on a 69-mile cycling odyssey dubbed, “Ivan’s Le Tour De Tobago.”
This year was the 3rd edition of an event which can be best described, not as a race, nor a fun ride, but a grueling, personal test of human prowess and spirit, acted out on the most mountainous roads on our picturesque sister isle - Tobago.
Corkie’s Casuals is nationally and regionally recognized for what used to be called ‘Corkie’s Casuals 100 Mile Ride’ but which two years ago, was handed over to the National Gas Company of Trinidad & Tobago. With that 100-mile baton passed, Corkie’s Casuals , as a high energy fraternity with a natural flair for life, sought out a new challenge.
One weekend while holidaying in Tobago and driving along the scenic Northside Road with its cruel climbs, the thought dawned on me for this herculean challenge of a ride. My teammates declared the idea insane, which in our language means “ride on”. The rest is history!
Our July 3rd epic journey began in front of Crown Pt Airport with 20 gladiators leading a ceremonial ride on flatter terrain, from where we traversed the peripheral roads thus allowing us to circumnavigate Tobago on bicycle. The first major assault is always on the much respected wall-of-a-climb at Les Coteaux which sets the stage for our ultimate physical and mental battle with the knowledge of tortuous climbs and dangerous descents looming at Castara, Parlatuvier, L’Anse Fourmi, Charlotteville and Speyside.
This year we had 13 cyclists who rode the entire course which concluded at the junction of the Claude Noel Highway and Shirvan Road. The distance was covered in an average time of 5hrs 20mins with remarkable performances for male rider Mr. Roger D’Abadie, a well known national adventure-racer who has made a quantum leap into the hardcore world of cycling, and my cyclist of the day - Mrs. Donna Pollard who finished this challenge on her 3rd attempt/year at the age of 63. Most amazing and yet another testimony that it is truly woman time!
Let’s see if a 4th is in store for 2011!

By IAN McDONALD 

When I was young I showed an aptitude for games. After a lot of hard practice I played tennis best, but I was also for my age a fair centre-half in football, I was a good swimmer, I could hold my own among the athletes especially in middle-distance running and I played reasonably good games of table tennis and badminton. I also had the makings of an excellent googly bowler, except that to supplement the googly I never could get the hang of how to bowl a leg-break which somewhat reduced the effectiveness of my attack.
But the one thing in sport that I never could begin to fathom was how to bat. I was a complete rabbit with the bat. No. 11 was too high in the order for me. My highest score in about 40 innings at junior school level was 7, including a snicked boundary. In particular, I could not conceive how anyone ever played fast bowling. I have never understood why this should have been so. I had a pretty good eye and reasonable reflexes and I don’t think I was more frightened than the next man as the bowler thundered in. Yet the fact remains that I simply could not get near making any contact at all with the ball as it whistled down and past or into me or my stumps. It has always been the greatest mystery to me in the whole of sport how anyone makes any runs at all, much less a century, off a man like Hall or Griffith, Lillee or Thompson, Holding or Roberts, Ambrose or Walsh, Brett Lee or Steyn.
Because I was once such a rabbit of a batsman I was fascinated by a recent discussion as to who had been the worst batsman in the history of English county cricket.      
Jim Griffiths of Northamptonshire was a prime candidate. He played 123 innings, top score 16, lifetime average 3.22. He had his supporters. But finally it was generally agreed that Kevin Jarvis       of Kent was the champion of bad batting. For over 10 years he gave valiant service as Kent’s No.11. He played nearly 200 innings, his top score was 19, and he averaged over his lifetime just over 3. The thing about Jarvis was that he took his batting seriously. He didn’t slog. He tried to stay there. He practised his batting at the nets. He experimented with new techniques. At   the start of one season he decided to try wearing spectacles. Unfortunately their assistance was not reflected in his scores. His season started with 0 not out, 6, 5, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0 not out, 0, 0 not out, 0 not out, 6, 0, and 4. This string of scores consolidated his title as the worst batsman in England and perhaps the world. He abandoned the spectacles.
I wonder if we have any challengers in West Indies cricket. I remember when I was a boy in Trinidad we used to delight in that excellent slow bowler Cyril Pouchet’s glorious ineptitude as a batsman. His portly figure was always applauded all the way to and then, after a glorious heave or two, immediately back from the wicket. I am sure he would have been a serious contender for the title held by Jarvis of Kent. But I am not up to date with tail-end statistics these days.
It is customary now to say that teams should not have tail-enders and that everyone should hold his own with the bat. What a pity this would be if it comes true. Part of the fun of the game has always been the wild swings and desperate defensive antics of tail-enders. Have we lost that glory too in the modern craze for professional perfection? I hope and pray it is not so. Have we no rabbits left in the world-wide hutch? Who is our West Indian champion of bad batting? Please can Professor McGowan do some research for us and come up with the answer?

EARL BEST puts the case for change

Christopher Gayle

“I was not interested in playing Test cricket but the cricket board just asked me.”

The words came out of the mouth of Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi but West Indies fans can be forgiven for thinking that the speaker was Christopher Gayle. His dismal record at the helm notwithstanding, the current West Indies skipper is making different noises from his Pakistani counterpart despite his own modest performance in the recent series against South Africa which his team lost 0-2. The home side managed to salvage a draw in the Second Test in St Kitts but lost all of the other nine games, two Tests, five ODIs and two T20s, to the visitors
“I think my temperament is not good enough for Test cricket,” Afridi told reporters in London after his side went under to Australia by 150 runs in four days in the First Test at Lord’s. “Test cricket is a different ball game and you can say that I am not strong enough mentally.”
 There has been no such admission of personal inadequacy by Gayle, who gave a poor showing as opener against South Africa, scoring a mere 159 runs at an average of 31. In fact, he has made it clear that he has communicated to the West Indies Board his desire to remain in charge of the regional team. Arguing that he is a “more mature person” since he has been captain, he says that he is “willing to move forward and have better results for West Indies cricket.”
“Definitely I want to go on,” Gayle told a reporter in Kingston in the wake of his replacement as skipper of the Jamaican team named for the just concluded regional T20 tournament. “Before the series I was brought into a meeting and had a discussion about my future and gave them my everything so we will see what happens.”
 “I am still willing to go on,” he added. “I am still pushing to go on. I still have a lot to offer in that particular area. There are a few issues I need to sort out before I progress.”
As a batsman,  Gayle has certainly progressed since he took over the reins in 2007, his average having moved up to close to 50 compared with an average over his whole career of 40.31. But his overall record as captain is no better than his predecessors’, the archives showing that in the 20 Tests under him the team has won three, including away victories against Australia and South Africa, with nine defeats, 30 losses in 53 ODIs and only seven wins in 17 Twenty20s.
The whole debate about the 30-year-old left-handed opener’s suitability for the job took on new life in England last year when he opted to stay on and play for his IPL club while his West Indies squad was assembling in London. He eventually arrived to join them a day or two before the start of the First Test and fanned the smoking embers of West Indian supporter discontentment into flames by declaring publicly that he was not particularly enamoured of the Test game. However, curiously, he now seems to think that the problem lies not in him or in his team but in the ”system.”
 “When you are not getting the support,” he went on to tell the reporter, “there is going to be a problem so we need to address that as quickly as possible and see how well we can come up with a better system.”

He apparently volunteered no explanation of what was wrong with the system and if the reporter’s curiosity was great enough to be put into the form of a question the response was clearly not deemed sufficiently important to be shared with readers. What readers do know, however, is that around the same time that Gayle had his conversation with the media, the Jamaican Board was issuing a statement intended to clarify the reasons for appointing Tamar Lambert to lead the T20 squad ahead of Gayle and his fellow Jamaican Nehemiah Perry was tendering his resignation as chairman of the national selectors. Lambert has led his country’s team to three consecutive titles in the four-day tournament but, according to the Jamaica Cricket Association spokesperson, retaining him as captain was perhaps designed to “just allow Chris (Gayle) to concentrate on his batting only and give us some mammoth performances which we know he’s capable of.”
“I cannot speak with any great authority on why the selectors found favour with Tamar,” Cricket Operations Manager Courtney Francis explained. “I don’t know if it has to do with his record or with continuity as it speaks to the Jamaica line-up. Though Chris is here, [it may be a situation of] giving Chris a little rest from the stress of just captaining in a West Indies series.”
Well, either way, it seems logical that the WICB should follow suit and let someone else handle the team - at least for the next assignment, a three-Test, five-ODI, one T20 encounter against the Muralitharan-less Sri Lankans in November. The West Indies can certainly use some of the “mammoth performances which we know he’s capable of” and none would argue, I think, with having “Chris (Gayle) just come in and do what he does best, hit away the ball and win matches for us.” So if relieving him of the captaincy is one way to achieve that, well, so be it. A “little rest from the stress of (…) captaining in a West Indies series” can hardly do him any harm.

But there are, I submit, much more compelling reasons for removing Gayle as West Indies skipper. The first is that although there is little doubt that he enjoys the full support of his men, he does not reciprocate. How often have we heard him publicly castigate players, particularly the batsmen, when the team has failed to avoid another defeat? Not that pointing a public finger of blame is not sometimes useful but it has become a frequent – and easy – way out for the captain. Behind the closed doors of the dressing room, any and every deserved dressing down can hardly be faulted; the skipper can do untold damage by addressing individual shortcomings in the full glare of the ubiquitous television cameras. Given to frequent rushes of blood early in his career, Gayle gets away with it repeatedly precisely because, more than most, at the crease he has been able to discipline himself and display the circumspection that so much West Indian batting has called for in recent times. So not at fault himself, he feels free to level an accusing finger at his teammates.
Secondly, there is the matter of Gayle’s cricketing brain, perhaps the issue raised obliquely by Afridi’s “you can say that I am not strong enough mentally.” If it is true that, as a very wise commentator has written, a cricket match is played “in the minds of the opposing captains,” then it is easy to see why WI continue to struggle at the highest level. From what I have seen of Gayle’s captaincy – as I revealed in this space last month, it has become increasingly difficult for me to watch the Windies in the field - his mind is a book without pages, One is hard put to work out what he is thinking from studying either his bowling changes or his field placements; the batting order gives even less of a clue of what is going through his mind. Does anyone get the impression that Gayle’s mind is always on what is going on on the field? Do you agree that John Dyson should take full responsibility for the errant call that gave England victory in the unforgettable rain-affected first ODI in Providence last year? If you were the West Indies captain under similar circumstances would the coach have been able to have his way? How often do you see Gayle engaged in a long discussion with the bowler before or during an over? How often does he do something in the field that makes you wonder what he is up to in a positive rather than a negative way?  How many times have you sucked your teeth in disgust at his failure to attempt to staunch the flow of easy runs by taking away the singles on offer in the arc from cover to midwicket?  When have you seen the obvious bowling change made four or five overs after you perceived it as obvious? In short, Gayle may well have the allegiance and loyalty of the men in his charge but can he command their respect for cricketing reasons?
And that brings us to a third reason why the time may have come to try someone else.  In the interview referred to above, Afridi has this to say. “A captain should be an example for the youngsters but I didn’t show any example so I am not capable of playing Test cricket.” Cast your mind back to the 11-ball over bowled by Jerome Taylor in one of the T20 World Cup matches. Clearly, something had gone wrong with the pacer and he needed to pull himself together again. As I remember it, Gayle remained glued to his spot in the slips and never once went over to offer a word of advice or of consolation – or of admonition even – to his bowler. Did you get the impression that the captain’s failure to intervene was an attempt to punish the bowler for his incompetence, temporary though it clearly was? What example did that behaviour set for the youngsters looking on, on and off the field?  
And what are we to make of Gayle’s giving Sulieman Benn marching orders? Is it not a public admission of something disquieting? Now, I have no problem with a skipper insisting on the bowler’s complying with his instructions; it’s why they say that the game is played in the captains’ minds. But captains may also sometimes have to sell the tactics that they espouse to bowlers, persuade them that their way is the right way. That’s what leadership is about. CLR James tells the story of how in Australia in 1961/62, Sir Frank Worrell told the third-man fielder, Rohan Kanhai, where he would like him to stand at the start of the next over from the same end. Just before the over began, Worrell looked to see where Kanhai was and found that he had taken up his position on the precise blade of grass where he would have placed him. Remarkable? Even more so when you learn that the conversation between the skipper and the rookie had taken place almost three-quarters of an hour earlier as the team was leaving the field at lunch time. No one expects Gayle to be a Frank Worrell but wouldn’t it be nice to hear a story that suggests that he sometimes thinks about what may be happening two overs or so down the road? Wouldn’t it be nice to hear a story that says that he has that conductor/band member type of relationship with one or two members of his team?
Fortunately, by the time selection week rolls around, there might be yet another reason to replace Gayle. Not with Dwayne Bravo as has been suggested by at least one commentator who neglected to offer any arguments in favour of the (ex)change. The word is that Daren Ganga, the T&T captain who has led his side to multiple regional championships in the second half of the current decade, enjoys precisely that type of conductor/band member relationship with the players in the Trinidad team. Numbered among them are Darren Bravo, Adrian Barath, Keiron Pollard and Lendl Simmons, all arguably knocking on the Test team door as well as the elder Bravo and Denesh Ramdin, well established in the starting XI. If Ganga continues to bring the best out of his team and to lead them to victory after victory, maybe he will also get some convincing scores himself in the process.
And then not only shall we have an answer for the often rhetorical question of who we go put but we shall have one as well to the all-important question of whether the would-be replacement can hold his place on the side.

ASHFORD JACKMAN reviews World Cup 2010

Germany’s Thomas Mueller, left, scores his side’s third goal as Australia’s Lucas Neill, centre, looks on during the World Cup group D match at the stadium in Durban, South Africa, on June 13, 2010.

At first glance, any claim following World Cup 2010 that Europe rules the football world would appear merely to be no more than a spontaneous reaction to the results. Three of the four semi-finalists in South Africa were European; the lone South American survivor finished fourth and, just to underline the continent’s dominance, Spain, the reigning European champions, emerged victorious in an all-European final. A resurgent Uruguay, the surprise team of the tournament which produced its best performance in four decades, prevented a complete whitewash of the rest of the world but even so, in the final four, the South Americans were no match for their old world adversaries.
My own opinion, as I tried to make clear in this space last month, is that Europe does rule football. It always has - whether or not a team from that continent was the last to the World Cup. It is true that Brazil has triumphed in two of the last five finals. In that period also, a proliferation of South American stars have taken Europe by storm: Romario, Rivaldo, Batistuta, Forlan, Kaka, Messi and Robinho, to name only those from the very long list. But for me, the South Africa finals have underlined a European stranglehold on the game both on and off the field, culminating in what we saw on our TV screens a few weeks ago masquerading as “World Cup Football: The Beautiful Game.” 
For those with open eyes and minds, it isn’t really hard to see the truth; one has only to ask some pertinent questions:
Where are FIFA’s headquarters? Zurich.
Who is FIFA president? Germany-born Swiss citizen Sepp Blatter.
Who were the previous presidents? Jules Rimet (France), the World Cup founder; Sir Stanley Rous (England); Dr. Joao Havelange, Brazil-born but resident in Europe. 
Which are the world’s richest and most powerful clubs? Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico de Madrid, AC and Inter Milan and Juventus, Bayern Munich, Monaco, Marseille, Ajax Amsterdam, Glasgow Celtic…
At what time are World Cup matches played? In European prime time; from Africa, Mexico, it doesn’t matter, European TV determines the kick-off times.
And where do all the top players in the world go to  their trade? Europe. Yuh done know.
Is it any surprise really that one continent could so dominate a tournament among the world’s best playing countries? Take a look at Lionel Messi’s miserable run in the finals and ask yourself: did the Argentinian’s exploits with Barcelona in the Spanish Primera and UEFA Champions Leagues expose to Europe’s coaches and defenders more than enough to develop strategies to stifle the deftest of diminutive dribblers? What did the Germans not know about Brazilian defenders Lucio, Juan and Maicon?
Of course, one could argue that the South Americans have also benefitted from playing among the Europeans; but that takes us right back to what I was saying last month about the differences in approach and style between Europe and South America.
Attacking football, I said then, has become a thing of the past. Drawing as a reference the 1954 Finals, I noted that the brilliant Hungarians entertained the crowds and Sandor Kocsis won the Golden Boot with 11 goals but West Germany departed Switzerland with the trophy. Weeks ago, Uruguay’s Forlan took the Golden Boot but Europe occupied the top three places at the end of the tournament.
Call it sentimentality, call it wishful thinking, I plumped for Brazil, a team I usually shy from because of their habit of over-indulgence in flamboyant players and manoeuvres, as the team to win this year. But in Carlos Dunga, they had a coach who understood the absolute importance of discipline and restraint in the modern game. Then they met the Dutch, a below-average team in terms of individual talent. From completely overrunning them in the first half, Brazil choked in the second, contriving to convert victory into defeat.
For me, Brazil had all the requirements to win it all in South Africa: a decent goalkeeper, a formidable defence, a resilient midfield and a multi-talented attack led by the recovering Kaka. But there is one area in team sport in which Europeans hold a natural and significant advantage - mental toughness. By coincidence, former England winger John Barnes, in Trinidad to scout young talent in the Digicel-sponsored program, is in the Express being quoted as saying that Caribbean players lack mental discipline. As the product of West Indian parents, he knows something about the Caribbean psyche and, having played in one of the biggest leagues in the world, Barnes understands the battle plans of the European teams. “‘Battle?’ Did you say ‘battle,’” you ask. Yes, there is no mistake; the world game today is really a war.
It is my contention that South Americans have the same problem; it is simply well disguised by the gulf between the technical levels of their players and those of our own. Just think of the many instances when Brazil has cracked under pressure at the World Cup. To list a few, the 1982 quarter-final loss (1-3) to Italy in Spain; the breakdown at the same stage against France (1-1, loss in penalty shootout) in Mexico in 1986, the 0-3 drubbing at the hands of the French in the 1998 final in Paris, and well, let’s not revisit the recent Dutch debacle in Mandelaland. Argentina have similar problems, and so, too, the African teams. Europe understands this; so why blame them for playing to their strengths? 
Football used to be a duel of speed, skill, power and flair; they are the elements that made it “The Game of the Century” in the 1900s; but it could not last. The face of the beautiful game has changed and the phrase has become little more than an empty slogan. The whole paradigm shift came about because of the need to win - and to do so by any means necessary.
Forget regional tournaments like the European Championship, the African Nations Cup and the Copa America; it is at the World Cup that international supremacy is determined. As noted previously, European nations became dismayed in the 1950s and 60s as the pendulum swung decisively away from them. In that period a plethora of athletic, breathtakingly fast, technically brilliant match-winners burst onto the world scene in rapid succession: Garrincha, Pele, Amarildo, Eusebio, Jairzinho, Rivelino, George Best and Johann Cruyff. It did not escape the likes of Germany and Italy that only two - Cruyff and Best, were European (Portugal’s Eusebio came from its then colony of Mozambique)
In that period between 1950 and 1970, the golden decades of football, South America won four World Cups and Europe just two. Portugal, with African stalwarts Eusebio and skipper Mario Coluna, claimed third place in 1966. Europe could not hope to consistently produce such athletes - just look at the Olympic Games of the last 46 years- the 100 and 200 metres, the high and long jumps, and you figure it out. To survive, they had to compete at their strengths. Enter defensive football, led by the phlegmatic Italians and the robotic Germans. With them came some fearsome characters not to be identified with flair and skill: Nobbie Stiles (England), Morais (Portugal), Romeo Bennetti and Claudio Gentile (Italy), Berti Vogts and Hans-Pieter Briegel (Germany), Americo Gallego and Diego Simeone (Argentina). And the list just goes on.
Stifling defence and lightning counter-attack quickly turned open football into a major gamble. The transformation had its desired effect: as European-style defence and discipline was installed and perfected, the seat of power moved with it. Between 1974 and the present, European teams have won six World Cups, while Brasil and Argentina have combined for four. The stark reality is more dramatically illustrated by the fact that, in those 36 years, Europe has occupied 30 of the 40 semi-final places and South America just 9 (the  tenth and final spot went to the Asian confederation’s South Korea in 2002).
The effects have been profound. In 1958, Brazil won the World Cup with three players of great skill and invention - Didi, Garrincha and Pele. The 1970 champions were even more blessed, with Clodoaldo, Gerson, Pele, Rivelino, Tostao and Jairzinho. But by 1982, their dream team that included Cerezo, Socrates, Falcao, Zico and Eder was knocked out by an Italian side that had scraped two draws and a 1-0 win in the opening round.  In stark contrast, three weeks ago in South Africa, Germany, full of young, strapping, fit but just average-ability players defended and counter-attacked their way into the final four.  The Dutch team could not compare to their illustrious predecessors of ‘74 and ‘78, and their best attacker Wesley Schnejider was making tackles well back into his team’s defensive end. They finished second-best in the world. Even Spain, with the finest collection of quality players in the tournament, was forced to play with great restraint and eventually prevailed on a series of one-nil results. 
The cost of Europe’s return to dominance on the field is not yet being fully felt. The sport remains attractive to the people who matter most - the younger generation- which has never known the great game as it was but who will continue to purchase team shirts and other memorabilia and keep television viewership in the billions. But there are signs that FIFA is concerned; every World Cup, it seems, the ball is changed, creating problems for the goalkeepers.  This was an attempt, say some, at artificially boosting the dwindling levels of goal-scoring; it was, if they are right, an unmitigated failure.
A more realistic method of restoring the game to its former glory would be to make fundamental changes to the game’s laws. FIFA needs look no further for ideas than basketball - significantly, a game that was developed in the 20th century. Rules such as the shot clock, illegal defence, the time limit on getting the ball out of one’s defensive half, etc., all exist to maintain high percentages of attacking play. The NBA is even using TV technology to determine certain close calls in the late stages of the game; FIFA, by contrast, is still trapped in 1966, as evidenced by its inability in 2010 to overrule an official’s failure to award Frank Lampard a goal against Germany. Even now, it is clear, Blatter and his executive are resistant to change.
Small wonder. Goals may be down but Europe is not; it remains well on top. For the price of TV broadcast rights, FIFA’s greatest single source of income, the sky appears to be the limit. The fans won’t grumble for long; in a few weeks they’ll be rooting for Rooney and Messi once again, as another season opens in England and in Spain and the coffers of Europe’s big clubs will continue to swell. It’s win-win.
So I end as I began: the beautiful game is dead; long live winning.

Master Swimmers Celebrate Father’s Day With 7,000-M Swim

THE 15 WHO MADE THE SWIM: (Left to Right) (Back Row) Bruce Daykin, Williams Grimshaw, John Lum Young, Bruce Perreira, Nico Kersting, Lindon Scott, Jeffrey Ferdinand, Dr Michael Amow, David Sobrian, Richard Knaggs. (Middle Row) Horace Govia, Dianne Henderson, Gordon Borde, Richard Cattermole. (Stooping) Andre Abraham

Fifteen Master Swimmers braved the rain on Father’s Day, Sunday, 20th June for a 7,000-metre swim, starting from the Las Cuevas Bay Beach Facility and ending at the Maracas Bay Beach in front of the lifeguard hut, cutting through waters 100 to 200 ft deep at times.

Most of the swimmers were former top swimmers who had once represented their country either as an age grouper or a Senior Swimmer.

Gordon Borde, a former three times cross harbour winner of the early 1960s, now 71 years old, was among the younger masters to make the swim. Asked why he and his Master Swimmers would swim in waters where some would not even dare to enter in a boat, Borde replied simply that the North Coast offers a challenge just like any other other, such as running a marathon or climbing Mt. Everest.

“It’s always hard to decide on a swim like what we did, but joy when you finish,” he declared.

This is the second year of this swim event. The group is now hoping that the Amateur Swimming Association will get involved next year and open it up to all-comers. Borde explained that Open Water Swimming is becoming extremely popular worldwide with over 2000 Open Water Swims taking place annually across the globe.

Last month, on behalf of the Amateur Swimming Association of Trinidad and Tobago, Borde attended the 1st Global Open Water Swimming Conference in Los Angeles, where top coaches, organizers and past world champion distance swimmers got together to develop and push the sport of Open Water Swimming to another level. Open Water Swimming is about to get a major boost with its first appearance as an Olympic sport in the London games of 2012.

In preparation for the anticipated expansion of the sport, the Amateur Swimming Association of T&T has established a committee with a mandate to organize Open Water swimming and make Trinidad the No. 1 Caribbean venue for international events.

Although the swim was not a race on Sunday last, Richard Knaggs, now 52 years old and a former age group national swimmer and a past triathlon winner, was the first to complete the distance.

God Doh Like Ugly, So Crapaud Smoke WI Pipe

EARL BEST weeps for the game in the region

In the 1990s, when Jack Warner’s November 19 World Cup machinations were the hot topic off the football field and Diego Maradona’s silky skills all the rage on it, a friend of mine described the sport as “barbaric”.

He was, in my view, right on the ball. Certainly, with the exception of an annual outing in the QRC Staff versus Students match, nothing could get me to expose my soon-to-be-quinquagesimal bones to the vicissitudes of a close encounter of the football kind. But quinquagesimal or not, those bones were routinely asked to put up with the demands of competitive cricket in the Queen’s Park Savannah as a handful of Maple diehards and I sought to win back an eventual place for the club at championship level. For me, front foot or back foot no-ball rule, one, two or three allowable bouncers per over, two or more players behind square on the leg-side, white ball or red, the “gentleman’s game” held no terrors. Playing cricket was an infinitely more attractive proposition than playing what some propagandists have taken to calling “the beautiful game”. And, of course, whether the West Indies were playing in the middle of the day in Bourda or in the middle of the night in Brisbane, I was a 100% interested listener/spectator.

Why do I bring all of this up? Because I did not one day go down to the Queen’s Park Oval for either of the South Africa games that had been moved from Jamaica to Trinidad. I never thought for one moment of going. I also did not see one ball of Day One of the Second Test in St Kitts.  Worse, I had watched the television all day, alternating between the US Open golf and the World Cup football in South Africa in the afternoon and I was only reminded that the match had begun when the evening news headlines highlighted the fine century scored by South African skipper Graeme Smith. I would subsequently discover that, perhaps because of Chris Gayle’s men’s abject surrender in Port of Spain, many of the friends with whom I frequently share cricket conversations had been equally uninterested in how the team was faring in Basseterre. These are people, mind you, who habitually exchange blow-by-blow comments on sporting proceedings from athletics to basketball to cricket to darts and so on all the way down the alphabet.

So in the face of such massive apathy it was difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that the West Indies cricket problem is much larger than most realize. What is also clear is that it will not be solved any day soon. I declare with confidence that the turnaround which many assert has started every time something positive happens is not around the corner.

The truth is that God doh like ugly. God’s disapproval notwithstanding, the WICB apparently has no problem with it; ugly has been a feature of the West Indian landscape for many years now. So crapaud smoke WI pipe.

Take, for instance, 1998, for me the most unforgettable instance of the phenomenon. The colossal Brian Lara was bestriding the cricket world, 291 at Sydney, 375 in Antigua, 501 for Durham and many glorious innings beside. Clearly, for this rare talent who broke the rules of behaviour as often as he broke batting records, the sky was the limit. When in late 1997, the WICB summoned Lara to Antigua for a media conference, he had piled up a string of what the media euphemistically termed “transgressions,” cussing  out team coach Rohan Kanhai in Australia and storming out of the dressing room, leaving the team hotel and moving in with best friend Dwight Yorke in England. Instead of censure, to the great surprise of the then skipper Courtney Walsh, the WICB announced to the world that Lara was to be the new captain of the team. Lara’s 47 Tests as captain eventually yielded 10 wins, 11 defeats and 26 draws. And he won 59 of the 125 ODIs in which he was in charge, losing an equal number.

Considered as being a not very successful captain, Walsh, by comparison, won “only” six of the 22 Test matches and 22 of the 42 ODIs his team had played since he assumed the reins in the 1993/94 season. But Walsh had served the region as selfless bowler for almost 17 years, never once drawing censure from the Board or his fellow players except when, out of a sense of fairplay, in the closing stages of an ODI which the West Indies went on to lose, he declined to run out Pakistan’s Saleem Jaffar who was backing up too far. The Jamaican’s enforced stepping down was due not so much to dissatisfaction with his performance or his results as to the conviction in many quarters that Lara had waited long enough for a mantle which was his as of right. Ask Joey Carew and Alloy Lequay who led the cheering section. And the WICB listened and complied.

But God doh like ugly. Ask Desmond Haynes. So crapaud smoke WI pipe.

Like Walsh, the Barbadian opener had been a faithful servant of West Indies cricket for the nearly two decades since he had become a lasting part of the post-Packer team comprising Clive Lloyd’s reinstated “rebels”. His one public transgression had come in 1989/90 when, leading the team in the Second Test in Port of Spain in the absence of Viv Richards, he had contrived to keep to seven the number of overs his bowlers delivered in the final post-shower hour, thereby denying England almost certain victory.  In 1994, Haynes applied to the WICB for a waiver of the rule requiring all Test players to make themselves available, on pain of exclusion from the relevant Test series, to represent their country in the regional competition. His Western Province team having reached the “playoffs” in the domestic competition in South Africa, the opener had to remain in the continent beyond the anticipated date.  The Board bouffed him. No exceptions, it insisted; play for Barbados or don’t play for the Windies.  Haynes did not play in any of the Tests that followed his decision to take on the Board.

But God doh like ugly. So crapaud smoke WI pipe. Richards provides living proof.

Having faced some of the game’s fastest bowlers without deigning to don a helmet, he had amassed 8,000-plus runs in 121 Tests not to mention the 6,721 runs he scored in 187 ODIs.  A 52-ball 81-minute century plundered against England in Antigua in 1986 is still the fastest ton ever made in Tests. His 291 against Tony Greig’s England in the Oval in 1976 is routinely rated among the top dozen innings in the game and his 189 in a 1984 ODI, also against his favourite foe  England, was for a long time the world record. Having reached the end of his playing days, Viv passed the captaincy on to Richie Richardson for the 1992 World Cup in Australia and declared his interest in making that tour his swansong. The Board bouffed him too. And when a few years later, he applied for the position of team coach, the Board bouffed him again on the grounds that he was uncertified. But God doh like ugly. Bennett King and his successor, a fellow Australian, were as certified as they come. The team’s results under these certified Aussies reflected no greater knowhow on the part of its handlers than had been the case prior to their arrival.

God doh like ugly. Ask current West Indies captain Chris Gayle about the subliminal messages we have been sending to our children over the years which have come back to haunt us in an ugly way now that those children have taken our place on the international stage. So crapaud smoke WI pipe.

Chris Gayle was born in 1979, just after the start of the decade and a half of West Indian domination. He would have been already a teenager when Mark Taylor’s fighting Australians won the last Test in Sabina to capture the Frank Worrell Trophy for the first time since 1976.  And he was arguably very sensitive to the issue when Jamaican captain Walsh was deposed to make room for his Trinidadian successor.  Darren Bravo, touted in some quarters as the “next Lara” (ha!), celebrated his 21st birthday in February. Adrian Bharath, who announced his Test arrival on the Test scene with an impressive century against Australia at the Gabba, was born in 1990 when the Lloyd/Richards era was coming to an end. In fact, there is not one single member of the 30-strong squad of players with West Indies contracts who was born after Barath, which means they all shared vicariously in the glory years. What is more significant is that along with the thousands of other supporters of the regional team, all of them have also been put through the ringer in the post-Richardson drought. But if they know by proxy what it is to win, they know first-hand what it is to lose. And how to misbehave with impunity despite being frequently on the losing end.

God doh like ugly.

Current West Indies coach Ottis Gibson played two Tests for the Windies, claiming three wickets at a cost of 91.66 per scalp. Walsh’s 519  wickets, once the world record haul and still the fifth highest of all time, were earned in 132 Tests at a cost of 24.44 per scalp. Together with Curtly Ambrose, who captured 405 wickets in his 98 Tests at a miserly 20.99 per scalp, Walsh led the regional team to many a win, including on occasions when defeat seemed all but certain. It seems inconceivable that anyone in authority could simply put this pair of indisputably great fast bowlers out to pasture and leave them there. As was the case with Richards, the Board appears to require certification before deciding to use the proven talents of the deadly duo. Maybe it is fair to insist on documentary evidence before any offer of a coaching job is made. But is it not beyond the realm of credibility that those responsible for running WI cricket think that the best use for Walambrose is in formal coaching?  Can they really be so devoid of imagination and insight? There’s a good chance that the correct answer is yes. Gary Sobers, the man routinely rated as the world’s best ever cricketer, has had virtually no role to play in the preparation of the hundreds of regional players who might have been inspired by his 8,032  runs and 235 wickets in Tests, not to mention the hundred plus catches and the 365 runs world record that stood for three and a half decades. And although the Board entered into a relationship with Allen Stanford whose credentials proved to be less than solid, it has never moved to follow his lead and give the ex-players the place they deserve in the administration of the game in the region. Crapaud smoke WI pipe.

Stanford would agree that God doh like ugly. And, yes, that crapaud smoke WI pipe.

Currently languishing in an American gaol, the Texan billionaire volunteered to invest some of his millions in West Indies cricket. He was embraced unquestioningly by the Board despite early alarums sounded notably by Michael Holding and Ian Bishop. He surrounded himself with former players, set up an elaborate managerial structure for his enterprise and offered fabulous sums as prize money for his ground-breaking competitions. It made millionaires of many of the players who are now contracted to the West Indies and may thereby have destroyed the sense of amateurism, patriotism and service to country that explains the success of Lloyd’s  side, for example. When Stanford was accused of massive fraud and tossed in jail pending trial, the Board remained completely silent about its involvement with their erstwhile sponsor and made no public gesture of solidarity or of commiseration with the disgraced philanthropist.

God doh like ugly, concurs WIPA boss Dinanath Ramnarine. And T&T skipper Daren Ganga.

Ramnarine has been the not-so-hidden hand behind several of the actual and threatened strikes that have plagued West Indies cricket since Lara rewarded the WICB for its efforts in accelerating his accession to the captaincy with a full-fledged player strike before the tour of South Africa in 1998. The leg spinner’s Test career figures make interesting reading. Playing in 12 Tests between 1998 and 2002, he bowled 582.3 overs, conceding 1383 runs and contriving to dismiss 45 opposing batsmen at an average cost of 30.73 runs. His profile on Statsguru identifies as part of the reason for his retirement at age 28 “brushes with those in a position to influence selection.” Ramnarine himself issued a statement on the occasion of his official departure in which he explained that he had not been “chosen for the West Indies for the last two years and I don’t think it was because of my performances on the cricket field. I believe the whole Caribbean knew what was taking place but everyone basically allowed it to happen.”

Ganga was told by an official - off the record of course - that the authorities had not taken kindly to his attempt to intervene on the side of his A team players when the Board sent Tony Howard to coerce them into signing up to replace the striking First team. Ganga appears to be the only one who continues to believe that he is not already an ex-West Indies player.

But God doh like ugly.

And although Gayle’s troops rose to the occasion in St Kitts and earned an honourable draw, it is very unlikely that they were able to draw even in the series. Or that they will be able to earn a draw or better in any series in the near future. These are players with no incentive to do well, led by a man who has said that he does not really want to be playing Test cricket.  These are players who, as a letter writer to the last month speculated,  were paid “a salary of US$500,000 for 2009 or over $3,000,000 on average for approximately 45 days of international cricket (…) for losing most of the matches they played. (Express, 10/06/16). On the same page, another writer suggests that “there is only one solution to the West Indian cricket team’s failure” (sic) “(which) is to give the “maroon caps” a flat salary.”On the nightly news that same week, former WI opener Bryan Davis recommended that replacing Gayle with Dwayne Bravo at the helm of the team might help to solve the problem. Everywhere you turn, the proposed solutions all fail to recognize the complexity of the problem. Call it hubris. Karma. Fate. Reaping the whirlwind. Lying on your bed as you made it. It’s all the same.

Crapaud smoke WI pipe because God doh like ugly.

Remember how we all slept uneasily on the night of April 17, 1994 when Lara needed another 40-odd runs to go past Gary Sobers’ 365? Did any of us even secretly wish that he would fall short out of respect for his hero? Remember how Mark Taylor ended his innings on his overnight 332 because he did not feel that he was worthy enough to surpass the Don? Well, we’re not likely to be able to change the face of WI cricket until we find some WI batsman with the humility to decline to carry his individual score past 400 out of respect for Lara…

And that and God face…

EARL BEST looks at last month’s TV sporting fare

Argentina’s coach Diego Maradona reacts during the 2010 World Cup round of 16 match against Mexico on June 27, 2010 at Soccer City in Soweto, suburb of Johannesburg. Argentina won 3-1.

As an educator of long standing, I have long railed against the excesses of television. It’s not that I do not ever have my eyes glued to the idiot box. But my relationship with my television set is explained above all by my interest in sport in general and leadership in particular. That is why last month, although not even a sense of duty could get me to watch Chris Gayle and his men struggle against South Africa - not even when Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Malcolm Nash were compiling their defiant centuries in the Second Test in St Kitts - I probably racked up more hours watching teevee than at any other time of my life.

With no apologies.

There was so much of interest on offer. After the French Open, I could hardly wait to see what new delights Venus Williams had for us at Wimbledon; I confess that I was also interested in whether she would play well on the grass.  And there was the US Open where Tiger Woods would try to find something like the A game that had more or less deserted him since his wife happened to get her hands on his cell phone.

Not one of these people who go into states of near depression  when the team they support loses, I was prepared to lose a little sleep over the NBA Finals, since the super-athletic Kobe Bryant was well and his Lakers still involved at that stage. And, of course, there was the World Cup where I wanted to see just how the Concacaf teams would fare as well as satisfy my own curiosity about the theory that Ashford Jackman has explained elsewhere in these pages.

As already noted, I do not have favourite foreign-based teams in any sport; I haven’t since Michael Jordan left the Chicago Bulls and Dwight Yorke was dumped by Manchester United. But Kobe on court - and Lebron James - has almost the same magnetic quality as Michael Jordan although I really couldn’t care if the Lakers win or lose. However, as the series progressed I found that it was not Kobe’s performance that kept me coming back for more. The player who caught my eye was from Boston not L.A and, unlike Kobe, his was not one of the names that so often grab the headlines.  I remember Rajon Ronjo’s name from the 2008 Finals when, the records show, he had started all 26 games and produced a series-winning performance in Game VI with 21 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and six steals. This year, too, the outstanding performance of the conference finals against the Cavaliers had been his triple-double of 29 points, 18 rebounds and 13 assists, all game-highs scores, in Game IV.

Tiger Woods

Rondo, my enquiries revealed, was a speedy, athletic point guard plucked by Celtics manager Danny Ainge out of the 2006 draft. I suppose those who follow the NBA daily are not surprised by what they saw in the 2010 Finals. I was. What struck me as the series progressed was the fact that despite the presence on the Boston squad of Paul Pierce and the more recently arrived Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, the natural on-court leader of the team was Rondo.

There is about him little of the flamboyant athleticism that catches your eye with Kobe and Lebron. He does not inspire the same confidence as the others when he is aiming at the basket, whether from the free throw line or elsewhere. But there is about him self-assurance, a persistence and an intelligence that you cannot fail to notice. And it is very clear that the three seniors are comfortable with his calling the shots, not simply because he is the point guard. Unlike Kobe’s, his leadership is not in the do-it-yourself Jordan mould, demanding the ball at key moments and taking - and making - all the clutch shots. His leadership is of the follow-my-lead type, taking control when necessary and making good things happen without necessarily scoring buckets himself.

At the end of the Finals, one commentator said that people will still not be talking of MVP Kobe in the same sentence as Jordan but “at least, no one will be surprised if he is -he has earned the right to be - in the same conversation.” Asked whether Rondo was the next Paul Pierce, the erstwhile Boston team leader responded with a shake of the head. “He’s the next Rondo,” he said, a compliment more than richly deserved.

Those who have watched Tiger Woods closely know that on the opening day, his policy has always been to “take what the course gives you.” So when, like main rival Phil Mickelson, he completed the 18 holes in the 2010 US Open at Pebble Beach course without a single birdie on his card, that was no surprise. But this was a course where Tiger had put the fear of God into his rivals with his massive 15-shot victory a decade ago so you had to wonder which Tiger would turn up on the subsequent days. After all, ever since Y.E.Yang had outplayed the previously virtually-invincible-when-in-the-lead Tiger on that unforgettable August Sunday afternoon in the 2009 PGA at Hazeltine, I had told myself that there was something troubling Earl’s son. And then came November and the accident. And the forced five-month layoff. And the handful of unTiger-like showings that followed his return to major competition in April.

Rajon Ronjo

Well, the real Tiger only turned up for half a day, birdieing the three closing holes on Saturday to move within what for him was striking distance of the leaders.  And I found myself wondering whether he has lost it, whether the road will now end short of Jack Nicklaus’ 18. And perhaps suddenly seemed a reasonable answer. Because a large part of Tiger’s armoury was his moral authority, the feeling in the mind of his rivals that this man can do nothing wrong. Now that the skeletons in his cupboards have been exposed to the view of the whole world, Mickelson and company may well be feeling that they have the moral high ground. And in golf topography is very often a significant factor…

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal both found themselves having to struggle to win in early-round matches at Wimbledon but they survived. And Venus allowed the world to focus on her serve and her ground strokes and her on-court rivalry with Serena. So the big story of the tournament was an absolutely incredible 11-hour 138-set match that went on for three days! France’s Nicolas Mahut and the USA’s John Isner kept the eyes of the tennis world and the Wimbledon cameras firmly focused on them while they battled to break each other’s serve in a marathon fifth set. It was a triumph of endurance that ended with the American victorious.. but it cost him. Drawn to play early the next day, he surrendered meekly, losing his serve in the very first game and going under to an unseeded Dutch player in an hour and a quarter. Isner had managed 112 aces in his match against Mahut; he never recorded one in the subsequent match in which he won a mere five games. Commenting on the outcome of Isner’s lost match on Friday, Patrick McEnroe wondered aloud what Isner, who, he noted, is a better-than-decent player, will now have to do not to be remembered for the match he could not finish.

I have been told that in Argentina, all classes are suspended and a working television is placed in every school when the national team is playing a World Cup match. Makes sense, doesn’t it? I remember when all schools used to be given a holiday when the West Indies were playing a Test match in their country. That practice was ended somewhere in the 1970’s or 1980s, I think, and look at what has happened to WI cricket since. Anyway, with T&T failing to make it to South Africa, I was hoping for a stirring showing from Mexico, the Concacaf team with, in my view, the game to go furthest. They made it into the Round of 16 but drawn against an in-form Argentina side, they just could not deliver the performance that was required on the day to move on to the quarters as they did a few Cups ago.

The second round roll call showed the following breakdown: Africa 1, Asia 2, America 7 and Europe 6. But, like Mexico and Argentina, Brazil and Chile were up against each other.  The most mouth-watering clash was Spain versus Portugal, the two teams who had produced the best attacking football so far. Portugal’s dismantling of the Korean Republic in the group stage demonstrated that there is a place for front runners after all although by the end of the first phase the tournament had only yielded 101 goals. The dearth of goals, which he expected, is the reason Jackman is sure that the World Cup is dying as a spectacle. The players, he argues, give their best to win championships for their clubs; when representing their countries at the World Cup, they are just concerned with not losing and defence is the order of the day. On the evidence of the first round, it was hard not to agree.

Watching Brazil’s Maicon, for instance, whose runs down the right flank in Serie A are legion, I noticed that he almost never ventured forward ahead of the ball. He never tried as far as I can remember to dribble past an opponent because presumably Dunga insists on his giving primacy to his defensive role. It’s worked for him. He is not partial to your typical Brazilian samba soccer but his success is to be explained by his subtle adjustment of the typical Brazilian emphases. For Dunga’s most successful predecessors, the emphasis was on forward movement but the adjective has disappeared under the incumbent coach. Possession remains the key element, possession supported by movement. How often does one see the team opt for the non-progressive backwards pass when the forward option might have yielded a chance for a two-on-two or a one-on-one in the attacking third? But the instruction appears to be that the attacking option is to be exploited only when it can produce a clear advantage for Brazil. It may work for them but on current form I think the priority given to defence will come back to hurt them.

And what are we to make of the implosion of the talented French team? The sceptics will make the link with the Thierry Henry handled ball which earned the French their place in South Africa. For me, the event recalls West Indies cricket and the difficulty of motivating players whose reputations mean that they do not need the extra exposure provided by being on the biggest world stage. Nicolas Anelka’s half-time outburst suggests that he at least, is concerned about how the 1998 Champions fared in the World Cup; however, the subsequent threat by some of the players to boycott the last first round game against South Africa suggests that some egos are bigger than the country’s international image. One commentator attributes the team’s behaviour to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s “conservatism” which he sees as spawning “unFrench conduct”, His policies have “fostered the kind of selfish individualism shown by the super-rich players of the French team, to the detriment of the national interest.”

Another writer raised questions about the connection between sport and morality. “Football should be exemplary,” he ended, “but instead it has become a symptom of everything that is wrong in France: the lack of respect pupils have towards their teachers, contempt for authority, civil disobedience.”  Whatever the truth of that, the Jules Rimet Cup is not on its way to Paris. It seems likely to end up on the other side of the Atlantic but its final destination will have been made much clearer when the results of the Brazil versus the winner of the Spain/Portugal match-up were known at the start of last week. For the moment, with all 16 teams still in the second round fray, my money is emphatically on Maradona’s men.

And my money is on the West Indies to lose the Third Test and surrender the series 2-0 to Smith’s men. I for one won’t be seeing any of it.

ASHFORD JACKMAN reflects on the group stage of World Cup 2010

Supporters of Brazil celebrate at the end of the 2010 World Cup round of 16 match between against Chile at Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, on June 28, 2010. Brazil won 3-0. —Photo: AFP

The World Cup, as we knew it, is dying. In fact, so predictable has the group phase of any World Cup Finals become that I could virtually write this piece before the competition had even started. I believe that, with the exception of France 1998, I have not watched an entire game in the preliminary stage since Italia 1990. And South Africa 2010 was no different; I have had a glimpse of a handful of the games and that has only served to underline my conviction that the World Cup will soon no longer be what we expect it to be.

Let us take nothing away from FIFA and the media; the pre-tournament hype, on local TV and in the press to say nothing of ESPN and FOX Sports, would con all but the most discerning observers. The unsuspecting get hooked every time; then, after a few laborious non-contests, they begin to grumble once more that perhaps it’s merely because these are the early games. For those who think that I am exaggerating, I would love to get a computer printout on the total number of back-passes made in the group phase which we can then compare with the number of times individuals have attempted to dribble past opposing players. But I did not compile any such statistics and I suspect that FIFA would not be keen to release such unflattering information on the “Beautiful Game.”

It is by no coincidence that the greatest believers are in the 35 and Under age group; most of them, having known little else, have grown up accepting what passes today for football. For four years after each World Cup, they are beguiled by the exploits of a small group of European clubs - Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Ajax Amsterdam, Bayern Munich, Arsenal and the two Milans, AC and Inter. Not many, it seems, pay attention to the fact that they are merely groups of above average players assembled solely on the basis of money. Then comes the Mundial, and suddenly, Wayne Rooney looks quite ordinary without the support of Nani, Tevez and company; neither does Cristiano Ronaldo seem half as dazzling without the Madrid cast around him. You can say the same for Didier Drogba, Wesley Schneider, Diego Milito, Lucas Podolski, Samuel E’too, Nicholas Bendtner, Klaas Jan Huntelaar and a dozen others.

Thanks to the exploits of its greatest gladiators - Pele, Johann Cruyff, Diego Maradona, Michel Platini, Ferenc Puskas, Zico, Garrincha and Eusebio and the enthralling, unforgettable contests they have produced in the World Cup arena, football has blossomed into the most globally acclaimed sport. Today, perhaps only a handful of South American players look capable of lighting up matches with the style and flair they sometimes produce in European club competition - and that is precisely the point at which I am driving. Ironically, Europe’s money - and the need for clubs to win at all costs - is slowly killing the game that has made so many of their clubs rich beyond comprehension.

To understand the problem, one has to go back to the greatest years of football - the 50s, 60s and 70s. Before money became the all-consuming objective, players’ wages were pitifully inadequate but they performed with a pride with which today’s youth cannot identify. It was not enough to win; they had to do so in style and gain the approval of the thousands who crowded the stadia to see their heroes.

With the advent of satellite television and its staggering money-earning potential, the billions watching in their living rooms now vastly outnumber those in the stands, and TV broadcast rights and advertising have blown ticket sales almost into irrelevance. FIFA’s concern about attendances in South Africa was not primarily of a financial nature - the crowds are important mainly for atmosphere, to supply the backdrop that television so desperately needs.

Winning has long since ceased to be a possibility - it has quickly become the only acceptable outcome. Real Madrid was the first club to find and exploit the only guaranteed way to sustain success - they won the first five European Cups (now called the UEFA Champions League) by importing a handful of the world’s best to transform their otherwise ordinary squad. Among the top imports were Puskas (Hungary), Raymond Kopa (France) and Alfredo Di Stefano and Jose Santamaria (Argentina).

That success sparked a trend that today is arguably out of control; the practice of winning championships through the power of the purse has been taken to extremes. The English Premiership, for example, boasts champions like Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool who sometimes start a match without a single English-born player on the field. The tale is similar in the other money leagues of Italy and Spain; clubs simply import talent to fill any need, the final product being a formidable assembly of capable mercenaries. With the World Cup, however, things are somewhat different. Selection is restricted by nationality although money often helps to unearth distant hidden roots of many family trees. Suddenly, the mega-stars are separated from their tailor-made support and, on the game’s biggest stage, they simply find themselves unable to deliver the goods.  Small wonder that, after winning the title,  Inter coach Jose Mourinho recently made the astonishing claim that the Champions League final was greater than its World Cup equivalent!

But the World Cup also suffers from another, perhaps even more devastating ailment. Because national teams cannot buy and sell to meet their needs, managers have resorted to defence as the means to victory. For the record, it was after the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland, where it rained goals, that European nations in particular decided they could not match their South American counterparts for talent. So they changed the game - almost literally.

A Germany fan holds up a mock world cup trophy as he waits for the start of the 2010 World Cup round of 16 match against England on June 27, 2010 at the Free State stadium in Mangaung/Bloemfontein. Germany won 4-1.

Part of their conviction was driven by the result; Hungary, the 1952 Olympic champions, had come to Switzerland riding on the wave of a record unbeaten run. Led by Puskas, the “Magnificent Magyars” destroyed West Germany, Brazil and defending champions Uruguay on their way to the final in Berne. When it was over, Sandor Koscis had the golden boot with 11 goals but the very Germans Hungary had crushed 8-3 in the preliminaries walked away with the Jules Rimet Cup.

After that, Europe had seen enough; especially when Brazil introduced the fourth defender in 1958 and yet won the Swedish World Cup on a canter.  England won it in ‘66 without a single winger, and, with the Manchester United “hatchet man” Nobbie Stiles brazenly kicking good players off the pitch, they did not concede a goal until the semi-finals. Italy “improved” on Stiles with the menacing Romeo Benetti at the 1978 finals, and since then fans have cringed at the bone-threatening tackles of Claudio Gentile, Hans-Pieter Briegel, Diego Simeone and Carlos Dunga, among others.

The defensive plague goes beyond more than just personnel. The game has been transformed into a fast-paced, breathless war in which flair is a rare extravagance. Whereas in the past one could easily distinguish a Rivelino or Garrincha from a Carlos Alberto or Bobby Moore, nowadays their build is uniform; most players are required to run non-stop, with everyone getting behind the ball once it is lost. Fewer and fewer are getting forward when not in possession. At best, one player of some skill will be asked to roam alone up front in the hope that he can somehow force the ball into the back of the net just once and the team can defend that solitary goal until the final whistle.

The decline was gradual at first. After losing the 1966 final and bowing out in the semis in Mexico, Helmut Schoen found a winning formula for West Germany. He played five at the back (Beckenbauer sweeping behind two centre-backs); he crowded the midfield with four (though Juergen Grabowski occasionally ventured briefly up the right flank) and goal-poacher extraordinaire Gerd Mueller loafed alone up front - a wolf looking for scraps. Like Puskas and the Hungarians 20 years before, Cruyff and his dazzling Dutchmen thrilled the crowds, only to be left holding the wooden spoon.

Other European teams began to appreciate the value of negative football. In Spain 1982, Italy claimed its third World Cup, despite winning only one game in the group stage - a 1-0  yawner over Peru that just saw them scraping home. Among their victims on the way to the final was one of the greatest assemblages of football brilliance the world has seen- the Brazil squad that included Junior, Toninho Cerezo, Paolo Roberto Falcao, Oliviera Socrates, Zico and Eder; they were cut down in the quarter-finals by a stifling Italian massed defence, a swift counter-attack and a less-than-cautious Brazilian defence.

The decline was complete when South America began to copy Europe. By 1990, teams were so disinclined to take chances that several matches in the knockout stage had to be decided by penalty-spot shootout. In that same World Cup, another defensive first was achieved when Argentina had the dubious honour of being the first loser that failed to score a single goal in the final. What should have been the climax of Italia ‘90 descended into scandal; the game lacked flair and enterprise; two Argentinians achieved infamy by being sent off, and Germany’s “winner” came from the penalty spot. But if 1-0 looked bad in 1990, Italian defence and Brazilian caution combined to produce the first ever goalless final four years later. In that same tournament in the USA, George Hagi led Romania to its greatest performance, strictly on the basis of swarming defence and lightning-fast counter-attacks.

Supporters of Spain celebrate in the stands with a mock trophy and a Spanish flag after the 2010 World Cup Round of 16 match against Portugal on June 29, 2010 at Green Point stadium in Capetown. —Photos: AFP

Fast-forward to 2006, where the Italians conceded only two goals in their entire campaign and came away winners. Even when the great Zidane led the French attack to its 1998 victory on home soil, it was based on an unbreakable defence that included Lilian Thuram, Bixente Lizerazou, Marcelle Desailly and the impressive Laurent Blanc, with Dedier Deschamps taking no prisoners in the defensive midfield position.

Europe has succeeded in turning the once beautiful game into a war of non-stop running, fitness and discipline - parameters that favour their culture and natural physical limitations. Not surprisingly, FIFA has done nothing to stop the decline; after all, it is Europe’s wealth which carries the game, and whoever the hosts, the World Cup must be played to fit into European TV prime time.

In blind man country, the saying goes, one-eye man is king. It follows that Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Spain, the teams displaying some creative talent, will be among the favourites to win the current tournament. Writing before the start of the round of 16, I see no reason to change my already public choice of the Brazilians. They always seem to win when they play well within their capabilities; at the moment, they are balanced, organised and have yet to extend themselves. As for the expectant fans, intensity and excitement will necessarily come only as the lesser teams are eliminated and winning becomes the only option. But whether South America triumphs over Europe, whether it is Brazil’s Kaka or Argentina’s Lionel Messi or Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo who brings some genuine attacking quality to the tournament before the final whistle, I fear the game of football will never again reach the heights it once enjoyed. Artistry is dead; long live winning!