Black justice is a term I use to describe how harsh we are in punishing each other in disciplinary matters.
We tend to bypass the wrist and go straight for the jugular when we find our own guilty even on the most trivial of charges.
We act as though there is no room for redemption except when it comes to us and our failings.
We befriend self-righteousness like a hangman’s noose.
It would seem that Dwayne Smith was overlooked for the captaincy of the Barbados Twenty20 team on similar grounds in recent years.
In fact, it was quite a revelation from a senior member of the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) that Smith wasn’t ratified as skipper of the team previously because of an alleged mistake he made four years ago.
He also conceded that it wasn’t fair to continue to make him pay for whatever mistake he was alleged to have committed.
Amen! Someone finally saw the light on the road to Damascus.
This after the fact that an entire selection panel resigned over the issue and Smith would have been demoralized and mystified even after he was selected by the regional body a year ago to captain the West Indies “A” team against Bangladesh in the shortest version of the game.
At that stage, it could have been a sign that he was being seen as a possible option to lead the senior West Indies team in this form of the game in the future, as it has become the norm for international teams to pick leaders for a specific form of the game.
It might have been an opportunity missed by the local selectors to put one of their own in the spotlight to be assessed by those who choose regional sides.
The Smith dilemma is all the more confusing when in recent years Bajans have complained en masse that West Indies selectors seem not to be looking in the direction of our outstanding players as in the days of yore.
That the BCA has now seen it fit to endorse Smith as skipper seems to suggest they have conceded that everybody can’t be wrong about his ability to lead and that he should be given another chance to show what he can do.
Not only that, I think if they had failed to ratify him this time, they could have been placed in the very embarrassing position of having to deal with the resignation of another selection panel in successive years.
I want to presume – at my own risk – that the Hendy Wallace-led panel would have had the same courage as the one headed by George Linton to stand up for what they believed.
I think real men rock the boat when they see injustice being played out and they dissociate themselves from it with the full understanding that the shoe could be on the other foot and they could suffer a similar fate.
Against the background of the Smith case and the bold admission that something was being held against him, the Wallace panel ought to be telling us why Kevin Stoute hasn’t been included in the Twenty20 squad for the upcoming regional season.
Suffice to say he was the leading batsman in our domestic competition and notwithstanding he may have been under bowled, Stoute is an all-rounder whose game is suited to Twenty20 cricket. I don’t believe it is too late to review what can only be seen as an oversight on the selectors’ part.
Justice must be seen to be done to those who are deserving based on merit, otherwise we may have more disillusioned cricketers than we can afford at this time when real quality is in short supply.
• Andi Thornhill is an experienced award-winning freelance sports journalist.
