Cricket managers come in all different styles. In the old days they would be Test cricketers; those who would mince their words (and their metaphors) like Ken Barrington, and those who would not, like Bishan Bedi, who once politely asked for the entire team to be dumped in the Pacific Ocean. Nowadays, they can be Rhodes-Scholars-turned-consultants-on-natural-resource-management-turned-CEO-of-companies. Like Ricky Skerritt, manager of the West Indies team. Skerritt applied for the job of West Indian team manager almost out of a dare put up by some friends. "They don't want some little shit like me who just has a bunch of fancy ideas." He had studied biology, developed an interest in ecology and the environment, gone to Oxford to read forestry and its relation to land management, but returned to St Kitts to become a precocious administrator. Still in his mid-twenties, he became chairman of selectors and manager of the Leewards youth team, and a few years later managed the senior team, led by Viv Richards.

Yet, from 1990 to 2000, up until a few months before the West Indian tour of England, he had almost entirely dissociated himself with cricket administration. He ran a company in St Kitts – and was on the board of directors for several others – but continued to travel far and wide to watch West Indies play. He was busy, very successful, but almost burnt out. "I lost my ... my zest."

Then, says Skerritt, "Word came out that West Indies Cricket Board wanted to make a change. They wanted a sort of corporate type of approach to running the West Indies cricket team, not necessarily a Test player, which had always been the case in the past."

One utterly normal evening at home, Skerritt's friends ribbed him about it. "`Ricky, look, that damn team needs a man like you.' I figured, at least, I would get a chance to go and tell them what I think."

But Skerritt was willing to have the interview cancelled because he needed to be at his daughter's graduation at Trinidad on the same day: "I said `Sorry, if I have to be there on Saturday then I'm not coming.' That's how little I really felt about it then."

Skerritt had the interview on Friday, went to his daughter's graduation on Saturday and returned home on Sunday, "When the phone was literally ringing."

"Stephen Camacho was on the other end and he said `Ricky, we need to get you on board now because this job starts right this week. I was almost like, `What job? I got a company with a hundred employees. I can't walk away from this company with two days' notice. Are you mad?' I asked for a couple of hours and hung up in disbelief." It was an offer he couldn't refuse.

The CEO in Skerritt is still alive. Look at the way he describes his job: "To facilitate the modernisation of our approach to preparing and developing this team, help to bring a whole bunch of stakeholders and resources into the same pool, help the players develop trust in the entity they are a part of, as opposed to feeling like a bunch of casual labourers." He makes it a point to stay in touch, by e-mail or phone, with those who are out of the team.

Despite the comparatively low-profile nature of his job, Skerritt does believe that a lot of fingers get pointed at him. "I have the accountability, but I don't have the responsibility. I don't control this team, I don't pick this team, I don't coach this team. But I'm out there with the boys emotionally. We lose in Trinidad and a guy upstairs is shouting `Skerritt resign'. I prefer him to say Skerritt resign than say something rude to Brian Lara. If I'm going to cushion the impact on the players then so much the better. I can handle it."

After all, life is not just work. "I don't live and die by this job. I love this job, I love what I do, I love the players, I love the cricket, I love being involved with the cricket and I will always love the cricket, whether I'm in this job or not. But if I'm not, I'm going to have a successful life. I know I'm going to eat, I know I'm going to be able to educate my kids. That's what it's about."

Rahul Bhattacharya is a staff writer with Wisden.com in India. His reports will appear here throughout the Test series.

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