THE Independent Review Panel of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Sub-Committee on Cricket Governance is spot-on in recommending that the West Indies Cricket Board be disbanded and an interim committee be set up.
They have, for too long, operated like a law onto themselves, doing as they please with a game that belongs to the people of the Caribbean. Surely, Professor V. Eudine Barriteau; Sir Denis Byron; former Trinidad & Tobago and West Indies cricketer, Deryck Murray; President of the Caribbean Development Bank, Dr Warren Smith; and President of the Grenada Cricket Association, Dwain Gill, would not waste three months in coming up with a verdict as strong as this.
Cricket, the International Cricket Council and the WICB need to look around them and see what is going on. Just recently, we saw how much bickering had engulfed the sport of football locally, with more football-related issues being played out in the courtrooms than on the lush greens of our many grounds. There and then the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) stepped in.
They immediately disbanded the administration that was in place and set up what they deemed a normalisation committee, to handle the day-to-day affairs of the sport and fix what issues were plaguing the sport at that time. Those issues included discrepancies in the constitution, legal matters and tournament clashes.
To make a long story short, close to one year later, football in Guyana is back on its development path, with the female team, the Lady Jags, recently qualifying for the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Associations of Football (CONCACAF) Olympic Qualifier after a 2-1 win over Jamaica.
Conversely, the West Indies have missed out on a spot in the ICC Champions Trophy, slated for 2017. It is an unprecedented feat, their moving from being the the kings of the world under Clive Lloyd to being in the trenches at present. And yet the board does not see the need to humbly resign.
Quoting directly from the Report of the CARICOM Sub-Committee on Cricket Governance, “Caribbean societies and the West Indies’ game of cricket have changed drastically since the origins of the latter in its organised, competitive form in the British colonial Caribbean in the mid to late 19th century. In the 21st century, the game of cricket is now embedded in the global corporate world of business. Caribbean people continue to experience excitement or despair about what happens on every field of play, to agonise about the fortunes, successes, failures or foibles of the West Indies teams; but Caribbean cricket is far more than the public’s support and consumption of West Indies cricket.
“The shareholders of West Indies cricket, led by the WICB, however, rely on the active involvement of other stakeholders of the game to deliver its product. These include several Caribbean governments who finance the construction and maintenance of the stadia where the game is played; several important industries, such as tourism, aviation, and food and beverages; former players, some of whom constitute an elite group of exemplary ambassadors of the game, known as the legends; and the current players, both women and men, and their representative organisation, the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) (who) constitute another key group of stakeholders,†the report said.
“Finally, the Caribbean public completes the stakeholder community on which the delivery of the public good of West Indies cricket depends.†Is this not enough? Dave Martins and the Tradewinds put it best: “Al yuh take a rest!â€
(GUYANA CHRONICLE)
