A LEADING Caribbean novelist is linking the decline in West Indies cricket to the insularity that prevails in the region.

George Lamming is of the view that the game in the region is at the heart of the history of the social and political conditioning of the West Indies.

"This is most unorthodox, but I have great difficulty in rejoicing when these territories are having their Independence celebrations. Every timeI hear Barbados, St Vincent or Trinidad and so on having their Independence [celebrations] I hear another coffin in the nail driven into the burial of the Federation," Lamming said.

"When the Federation collapsed and they all scrambled for Independence, it deepened the insularity and created a fragmentation from which we have never recovered.

"The West Indies cricket team is a reflection of that fragmentation. We will not restore the full resources of the West Indies cricket team until we can find a way of politically unifying the institutions of the Caribbean."

Lamming, who is among those widely credited with making the emergence of a Caribbean identity possible, made the observations as a guest on the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation's radio cricket discussion show Best & Mason on Tuesday night.

The 80-year-old Lamming is a former lecturer in the Creative Arts Centre and Department of Education at the University of the West Indies.

He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Pennsylvania and a lecturer in Denmark, Tanzania, and Australia.

A model created by the legendary 3Ws, Lamming said, was what Caribbean politicians needed to duplicate.

Players from previous eras were more concerned about building the region, but he contended that players of today were more focused on financial gains.

Lamming was also disappointed at the relationship that existed between players of the modern era and their employers.

"Today, cricket is a business. Guys are playing for money. They have every right to play for money," he said.

"It is sometimes unfair to be attacking them for indiscipline. We have not prepared them to carry the weight of that legacy. You can't ask them to carry that weight. They have one little chance to make some money.

"I've never been able to understand why we should allow the tensions between the board and the players to go on so long. It seems that the history of the relations of the board with the player is a history of unending tensions.

"You never get the feeling that the board and the players are working towards some consensus which has to do with the sovereignty of the game. It is the worst kind of industrial work relations that you can get. It is tied up with the fragmentation of the region." (HG)