An open letter to ex-CWI president: Thanks but no thanks, Mr Cameron; forget I’ll-be-back talk

“You may not think there is anything wrong with all of that,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff repeatedly told the Republican members of his committee earlier this week, “but I do.”

“All of that” is a longish, itemised list of some of the most egregious actions—not to say ‘crimes’—already known to have involved the US President or one or more of his close associates.

So what, Mr Dave Cameron, is its relevance for you? Why do I bring it up here?

Well, Donald Trump will soon—Inshá’llah—be a former president; you—thank God!—are already a former president. And last week, some American networks were making the world acutely aware of who, despite the best efforts of Fox News and Trump’s delusional supporters in Congress, occupies the moral high ground in their country.

At that same time, the Caribbean media were making the world acutely aware of the best efforts of a self-deluding ex-president to blame treachery for his fall from grace and so occupy the moral high ground in the region.

You may not think there is anything wrong with that, Mr Cameron, but I do. We do.

“Cameron vows to return,” Friday’s Express blurbed its Page 58 story.

I imagine that the loud, sustained steups that provoked throughout T&T was replicated in the Windwards and Leewards and picked up all the way up in Jamaica.

“Caribbean cricket has not seen the last of Dave Cameron,” the first paragraph of the story read, “the deposed West Indies cricket president has warned.”

‘…has warned’? Why ‘warned’? A Freudian slip? Or do you think the story, with its Kingston dateline, was written by Jamaica Cricket Association President Billy Heaven, who you implicitly suggest was responsible for the JCA’s two votes going to Ricky Skerritt last Sunday?

I can understand Express Sports Editor Garth Wattley warning President Skerritt, in his “A Different Spin” column, to beware the men who he says stabbed you in the back.

And I understand why, in the same paper three days later, Vaneisa Baksh also clearly warns the newly elected president that the “opportunistic forces that worked in his favour are still at large, and definitely in charge, and he must not for a moment let his guard down.”

But lest you get the wrong impression, neither Wattley nor Baksh is sorry to see you go. I can say without fear of successful contradiction that Wattley has no sympathy for you and, contrary to any impression conveyed by a misreading of his “President Ricky’s big job” column, he was not seeking to defend your stewardship of Windies cricket.

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Baksh’s view is explicit and unequivocal. She sees Skerritt and running-mate Dr Kishore Shallow as having to “undo the Cameron carnage” and warns the region not to forget that “we are celebrating the removal of a despot.”

Both columnists feel a certain disquiet at the prospect of your successor having to interface on a daily basis with men who are, in Baksh’s words, “capable of such disloyalty.” And both, I feel, would agree that the region would have to be warned about any attempt on your part to make a return.

I do not share their disquiet about the newly elected duo’s CWI fellows; in my view, the men you now see as traitors for having apparently given you their word and then failed to keep it, we in the region who truly love West Indies cricket may one day hail as heroes for having given you your comeuppance.

But I am completely untroubled about any proposed return on your part; Skerritt and Shallow’s are committed to the cleaning of the CWI stables so there will, one hopes, henceforth be no room for you and others like you.

So, Mr Cameron, a word to the wise: Shift yuh carcass! Forget all that royal ‘we’ stuff about “we will be back” and “we are here to serve [so] if people at some point in time believe that we are needed, we are here to serve and we will continue.”

The time for ‘we’ was when you were in charge of the public good; that time is emphatically NOT coming back because in those days your trader concern was neither ‘we’ nor ‘WI’ but ‘I.’

You may not think there is anything wrong with all of that, Mr Cameron. But we do. WI do

Fool we once, they say, shame on you; fool we twice, shame on we.

One final piece of free advice: If you have not already done so, have your business, Infiniti Capital, which you assured the Observer “continues to operate [and] has always been there,” invest in a first-class tennis court.

That way, you can invite West Indies Players Association President Wavell Hinds and maybe the Guyana Cricket Association and the Barbados Cricket Association presidents over for an occasional game.

It’s the closest you will ever again come, I reckon, to service to West Indies cricket.

Do not, however, err by inviting any of the legends, the living embodiment of West Indies cricket; that’s a recipe for losing every time—at love!

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Earl Best

Earl Best taught cricket, French, football and Spanish at QRC for many years and has written consistently for the Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review since the 1970’s.
He is also a former sports editor at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad Express and is now a senior lecturer in Journalism at COSTAATT.