Bacher moves to save Test series

Ali Bacher left South Africa for Heathrow last night to host emergency peace talks between Brian Lara and representatives of the West Indies Cricket Board that has startled world cricket by unceremoniously sacking him from the captaincy.

Bacher, the driving force behind South Africa's commitment to multi-racial cricket, will seek to shame a draconian West Indies Board and their wildly rebellious players into an uneasy truce by pleading that a last-minute cancellation of their historic tour to the republic would cause financial and political disaster.

Bacher, managing director of the United Cricket Board of South Africa, has already temporarily stemmed a further revolt by the seven West Indies players in South Africa by persuading them to remain in the country for another 48 hours while the outcome of the peace talks becomes clear.

"We want a swift resolution to the problem, and we want the tour to take place as originally planned, with the original squad," Bacher insisted before leaving Johannesburg. "We want to bring the West Indies Board and the players together and create the environment for them to talk."

As part of the attempt to resolve the crisis - precipitated by Lara's high-risk display of brinkmanship over South African tour payments, and exacerbated by the board - Bacher was accompanied on the flight by Clive Lloyd, the West Indies tour manager. Joel Garner, one of the more conciliatory figures of the West Indies Board, is also expected to arrive in London from Bangladesh, where he is managing the West Indies A team.

Lara, along with his vice-captain, Carl Hooper, had covertly broken away from part of the West Indies party at Bangkok airport, while en route to South Africa from a one-day tournament in Bangladesh. Instead, they met the seven outstanding squad members in London, and hoisted their standard.

Lara, supported by the newly formed players' association, requested that board delegates discuss the players' financial grievances in London. Predictably, the board refused, instructing Lara and Hooper to attend an emergency board meeting at the inappropriately named Halcyon Cove Hotel in Antigua.

When Lara and Hooper refused, but were appropriately represented instead by players association officials, the board took the opportunity to "unanimously" sack them both - in Lara's case, punishing what they have long perceived as the unacceptable egotistical posturing of the most talented batsman in the world.

Even Manuhar Ramsarran, sports minister in Lara's home island of Trinidad, pronounced that Lara's "disobedience" deserved punishment. And Bacher, the self-appointed peacemaker, did not spare him, seemingly finding some common ground with those critics who contend that he has been reduced to a grasping, argumentative politician, a petulant if exceptional talent, as self-indulgent as he is invariably strong minded.

The nine West Indies rebels spent much of yesterday in emergency meetings at the Excelsior Hotel at Heathrow. Lara, emerging briefly to stroll across the lobby, refused to comment as he contemplated his abrupt removal from a post for which he had long agitated, and which he had undertaken with considerable success since his appointment less than a year ago.

That Lara might tour South Africa as merely a player seems inconceivable; that an implacable board might reinstate him equally improbable. But Courtney Walsh, head of the players' association, expressed a wish to fulfil the tour, the first Test series undertaken by a West Indies side in South Africa.

West Indies cricket is held to be facing its worst crisis since the schisms caused by the rival international circuit plotted by the Australian television magnate, Kerry Packer, more than 20 years ago.

It is worse than that. The Packer Affair embraced world cricket and led to greater financial rewards for all Test players; this is much worse, a localised Caribbean dispute between an impoverished board and world-renowned stars expecting western-style rewards.

Pat Rousseau, the hard-line board president and Jamaican businessman, concluded his announcement of Lara's sacking by announcing that a replacement squad would be selected on November 13th, three days after the official start to the tour.

That a meaningful tour could be staged in such circumstances, though, is inconceivable. Lara's brinkmanship has been fully supported by the players' association and, it seems, has won loyalty from the overwhelming majority of his players. Without Bacher's successful intervention, the South African tour is dead, and West Indian cricket is trapped in the worst crisis in its history.