Dubai: The West Indies’ absence from the Champions Trophy is a result of growing player power and the game changing, according to two-time Twenty20 World Cup-winning captain Darren Sammy.
The Caribbean collective have been without their top players — including Sammy — due to a pay dispute and, as a result, the Windies have failed to qualify to a major tournament for the first time in their history.
The West Indies Cricket Board had essentially asked players to choose between playing for the national team and playing in lucrative overseas Twenty20 leagues and their senior stars have chosen the latter. Sammy himself recently won the Pakistan Super League with Peshawar Zalmi.
“You can’t ignore what’s happening,” Sammy, who is in Dubai as a Champions Trophy pundit for OSN, told Gulf News.
“Now players can see it’s not all about international cricket. When I grew up, the goal was to play for the West Indies and then maybe play county or league cricket in England.
“But now, if you don’t get into the Indian Premier League, you can get in the Bangladesh Premier League or the Pakistan Super League or the NatWest T20. South Africa and Afghanistan now have one, there’s also the Big Bash in Australia. There are so many opportunities to make a living.
“You’ve seen it happen in football, there is room for club and country, but when you try to enforce one on the other, that’s where I think problems arise.
“Cricket is changing,” he added. “In this day of age, cricketers understand that they are the product and now boards can’t just boss them around anymore, it’s a different age, a different era.
“You only have to look at what’s happening in Australia,” he said in reference to a similar issue brewing with the Australian national team.
On the future of the West Indies, he added: “We are struggling because we don’t have our senior players, and that’s sad, but to be honest it’s a reality now that I don’t lose much sleep over.
“I just wish the youngsters all the best because it’s a tough job to go out there and play knowing you don’t have your senior players there with you.
“We have to be optimistic, we have some very talented youngsters, and even though we don’t have our senior men in the team, the youngsters have shown that with more experience they can move forward, but the player-board relationship has to be good as well. It takes everybody to move in the right direction. But they don’t have the likes of Gayle, Bravo, myself and Pollard, who could really have a say in what’s going on.
“All is not lost, I still have hope. My heart is always with West Indies cricket because that’s what got me where I am today. I would love to be talking about the team positively in this Champions Trophy but that’s beyond our control, now they just have to make sure they qualify for the 2019 World Cup.”
