This is going to fall on deaf ears, but it has to be said anyway. Please, please, for the love of the all that we cherish about this country, don't use Brian Lara's latest record-breaking achievement as just another excuse for a lavish homecoming, complete with all the trimmings of grandiose promises, hearty backslapping and endless partying.
Make no mistake, to become the highest run-scorer in the history of Test cricket is a feat worthy of recognition. But what is the sense in all of the impending celebration without a meaningful commitment to giving the young people of Trinidad & Tobago a chance to aspire to the heights that the national hero has scaled?
More than eleven years after Lara was feted from pillar to post in the wake of his first world record - the 375 against England in Antigua in case we needed reminding - is cricket here any better off? The new president of the Trinidad & Tobago Cricket board has reported that the organisation is bankrupt. Fewer and fewer clubs remain in existence along the East-West Corridor, many of them populated by huffing and puffing forty-somethings who should have retired a long time ago except that many of the teenagers who should be taking their place are nowhere near the recreation ground, choosing instead to spend their days watching BET and their nights gallerying with the accoutrements of a shallow, superficial and ultimately destructive lifestyle.
If the game is still flourishing in the rural Central and South, producing the talents of a Denesh Ramdin and a Ravi Rampaul, why has all this abundance of youthful potential made no long-term difference to the fortunes of the senior national team? Daren Ganga, another product of the rural heartland, leads his country into their opening match of the regional first-class series on the back of an abysmal 20-year drought, the successes at under-15 and under-19 level notwithstanding.
When a young team, minus all of the established players, lifted the limited-over title last year in Barbados, it was hailed as the dawn of a new era. Yet last month, the defending champions returned home with a record of five losses from five matches. So much for a new era. If anything, it was another false dawn, a confirmation that despite having the personnel capable of conquering the region, there almost always seems to be some internal strife, sparked by some selfish ingrate or swell-headed prima donna that turns any reasonable effort to develop a cohesive national team into a disjointed fractured bunch.
Pettiness remains the order of the day. A certain young player will never get a chance to play for the zonal youth team because he comes from the wrong club, at least in the eyes of a certain selector. Being an official or an administrator is not generally seen as a means of providing opportunities for others on merit, but on the basis of favour, friendship or family ties. Honesty and integrity are subservient to doing what is necessary to get in tight with the right people, never mind that a promising career is trampled underfoot in the obscene rush for kickbacks, whether that be a lucrative business deal or just a nice shiny badge and a seat in the air-conditioned box at the Queen's Park Oval for the next Test.
The country that has produced the greatest batsman of the modern era and one of the greatest of all time continues to have nothing meaningful to show for all of his record-breaking achievements. Just in case this is misinterpreted, meaningful does not mean a promenade, a recreation ground, a brand new stadium or a highway. It means a record of success or at least consistent improvement at senior national team level. It means a measurable growth in the number of people playing the game and the attendant increase in the number of clubs and teams involved in various levels of competition throughout the country. And throughout the country means Tobago as well. As with almost everything else and every other sport especially, cricket in the sister isle continues to be neglected, the readymade excuse being that it costs too much to facilitate the regular inter-island travel necessary for the players there to properly address the selectors.
Yet there will always be money to regale the returning champion and get properly drunk on his behalf. I know that the readership of this column, as small as it was anyway, has dwindled even further two paragraphs ago. The UNC fanatics, having been insulted at the suggestion that Sachin Tendulkar is not number one, are gone, so too are the PNM stooges, incensed at the inference that the intended Brian Lara Stadium is merely an expensive vote-winning exercise. So that means maybe the few left are not bound by foolish partisan attitudes.
We should all share in the pride of Lara's latest achievement. Let me tell you, to be there to soak in the reaction to his double-century at the Adelaide Oval last Friday and going past Allan Border's world record the next morning were emotional moments, even for a career cynic. But instead of rushing to shower him with more gifts and repeating the same old platitudes in the VIP lounge or the rumshop (de Prince is now de King!), maybe we should look at what can really be done, in his name, for the good of a game that has given him, and us, so much.