By Ray Ford
At times, we make grand
announcements, and then after
that, not a whisper can be heard.
I do not want to be counted among
those. And so here I am, back again.
It was back in January 2020 when I told
our esteemed editor of my plans to run
for the office of Cricket West Indies
President and I did. And so here I am to
announce, that I finished the race.
Finishing races is important to me,
because at KC, ‘Billy’ Miller was one of
my idols. And he always ran through the
tape and left the judging to the judges.
I don’t know what got into me –
probably something similar to running
into a burning house without a fire-suit,
to rescue a child. Sometimes, win-loseor-
draw, some things must be done.
These days, people weigh-up the
chances of favorable outcomes. I didn’t.
Some people are dead scared of failure.
I am not one of those. Besides, success
almost always, never teaches lessons.
Failures do. And I’m a student of and
for, life. I like to learn.
Sometimes, suspicions are harbored,
but never confirmed. And we generally
fear confirmations, because they run
cross-grained to what we want to
continue believing. But, would I rather
not die a fool? For sure. And so, run I
did. It’s no use being swallowed into the
belly of the beast, spat-out through the
tail, living to tell the tales, and then not
tell them.
West Indies cricket is like a labyrinth of
underground pipes, which I thought I
knew, but did not know. And so: “What
of cricket, did you think you knew (or
so such a thing)?” asked C. L. R. James.
But nobody has ever been able to tell Ray
Ford anything. Because, he like to give people
and institutions, the benefit of the doubt.
But in the end, my suspicion was confirmed
– that I was an outsider, and pleaded my
case, as such https://barbadostoday.
bb/2022/11/11/btcolumn-west-indiescricket-
the-case-for-the-outsider/ . And
being an outsider proved tons of fun.
How can an outsider be thrown out?
Besides, it’s much more fun being on the
outside – stoning them with rotten meat,
when compared to dining-in with them, on
the same! Bone china has never impressed
me all that much. Coal Stove in New
Kingston, had always been good enough.
All that I wanted to say, I have already said.
And so, as Vinnie Isaacs would say: “Let it
soak!” But what a pleasure it was, ‘drinkingjuice’
with Sobers!
“Do me a favor,” many months ago Sir Gary
asked. “Just call me Gary!” And every time
I backslid into ‘Sir Gary’, he would remind
me not to. What a man!
“I remind you of ‘Collie’ (Smith)?” I at one
stage asked.
“You know, ‘Collie’ and I were like this,”
said the greatest of them all, crossing his
two index fingers. At which I quickly pulled
him back up. “These things do happen,” was
the only thing I could have said. And I said it.
“So why didn’t you tell him that you were
running for president?” Sir Wes (Hall) asked
me the day after I had met with Sir Gary
this past October. “Why draw Sobers into
this?” I in-turn asked.
Spending an afternoon shooting the breeze
with Sir Gary, was like spending time on an
oasis – sequestered from the cut-n-thrust.
And what did I learn?
To be genuinely interested in people – to make
them feel bigger than they think of themselves.
These days, people hardly have time for
people. But Sir Gary had time for me. And the
topic of cricket hardly came up.
I thought it best not to bring up that Saturday
back in February 1968 at Sabina Park.
Everybody suspected that Sobers would be
batting that day, and I was among those who
piled in. From the overflow seating section just
north of the Kingston Cricket Club pavilion, I
heard the little green gate creak as he pushed
it. I could even hear the pad-flaps slapping
against his thighs. The collar was up, and so
was the sun. Talk about the regal splendor of
Test cricket! That was it. But one ball. And
Sobers was out. Ducks tu raass! Sabina was
numbed into stillness. How could this have
been?
Not giving up on my hero, I came back to
see him bat in the second innings. And in
scoring a century, Sobers was brutal, and so,
forgiven. But it was his bowling that more
impressed. Loping uphill from the press-box
end – my end – Sobers made the new ball
sizzle. I wanted to bowl like him. But never
could. He came in ‘over’. I preferred ‘round’.
But now it was time to moor – watch TV,
muse at the world’s problems, and sip a few
beers. “One more?” Sir Gary asked after my
third. “Just as cheap,” I said with a shrug.
Ray Ford has never been known to refuse
another beer. So why start at this stage in
life? And who was I, to turn down another
beer from Sir Gary, when beyond his gate,
the barbarians laid in-wait?
Here what Garth Wattley writing in the Trinidad
Daily Express had to say about Ray’s candidacy
for president of West Indies Cricket:
The West Indies couldn’t win a second One-
Day match against South Africa.
Disappointing as the four-wicket defeat
yesterday would have been for those
expecting a 2-0 series win rather than a 1-1
stalemate, yesterday’s outcome was really
right in line with the way West Indies teams
now play.
Inconsistent play, from inconsistent, illequipped
players is now the WI cricket
status quo. And in the Caribbean, we don’t
like to mess with the status quo.
The experience of Ray Ford, who failed in
his bid to become president of Cricket West
Indies, was therefore highly predictable.
Ray, a writer on West Indies cricket of long
standing, was a rank outsider. Not part of the
territorial board establishment, or one with
WI legend credentials, he didn’t even get on
the ballot. So, with Billy Heaven declining to
challenge Kishore Shallow for the presidency,
Ricky Skerritt’s former vice-president will
assume Cricket West Indies’ highest office
by default, so to speak.
Ford may not have been the best man to
take over the wheel of this listing vessel that
is West Indies Cricket. But the cricket-loving
public will never know for sure. The outsider
was not given due consideration. It was as if
a silent code kicked in with cricket people.
That is the sense one gets from some
of Ray’s writings — as published in this
newspaper — on his attempt to be
considered.
Read him again: “My run to lead West
Indies cricket began when during the
WI-India Test match at Sabina Park
in August 2019, I pushed back my
ice cream chair and made the grand
announcement, so unbearable was the
sloven I was seeing below me. Not long
after, I went upstairs to the TV/radio
quarters got the ear of a former West
Indies player and whispered, ‘Let’s team
together and overthrow the thing!’
Twenty-nine years before when I was
just getting out of business school,
Jordan D. Lewis’s Partnerships for Profit
had hit bookstores. And my thinking was
to form a strategic alliance with a CWI
insider or a former West Indies cricketer
with currency, to shake the thing up. But
alas, it was as if I was talking Greek. ‘I’ll
soon be back,’ I remember the former
West Indies cricketer sheepishly saying
to me. But he never did return, to
continue the conversation.
Right there and then, I knew that I was
embarking on a journey virtually all by
myself.”
He continues:
“On the morning of January 10, 2008
– the first day of a WI-SA Test at the
Sahara Stadium in Durban, South Africa,
and after a long overnight flight the day
before, as soon as I arrived groggyeyed
in the press quarters, a Caribbean
cricket commentator saw me and
pounced. ‘Ray, join me on-air at lunch
time,’ I remember him saying. The same
thing happened to me at Kensington
Oval last October when I turned up as
a guest to watch the BCA Super Cup
50 Over Final that Sunday the 16th.
How come these people were so keen
to talk to me on-air, and yet during my campaign,
none would say a word publicly, on my behalf ? In
fact, on the preceding Tuesday, I had spent all day
preparing for what I thought was an agreed-upon
radio interview. But during the program, my phone
never rang. Would the host have stood-up Johnny
Grave or Dominic Warne?”
One more from him: “I have a record of sending
my interest in running for the post to a specific
nominator – a CWI director. But yet a few weeks
ago, when the said nominator was asked on-air, if he
had received any other requests for consideration
besides the one from Dr Kishore Shallow, he said
no. And to me, that was a mischaracterisation
of the truth. Also, on a Caribbean cricket radio
programme of February 21 last, when a Guyanabased
journalist mentioned my name, the host
bolted from the mention, swifter than Usain Bolt
could have.”
Taken all together, those anecdotes suggest either
that some people didn’t see Ford’s bid as being
of any merit, or that they did not want to be
associated with a maverick.
I was glad to give Ray the space to have his say;
to make his case for how he would try to revive
the game in the region. Maybe his bold and sincere
attempt would encourage more discourse about
a different approach to how WI cricket is both
approached and managed. He may motivate others
to try.
Make no mistake though, history is showing us that
the current set-up is failing the game, regardless of
who sits in the hot seat at Coolidge.
However, I suspect the Ray Fords in WI cricket will
continue to be kept out of the reckoning.
WI only want to bat a certain way, no matter how
often WI keep losing.
SO LOSE WI WILL