The refusal of the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) and the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) to attend a Cricket West Indies meeting on governance reform is not sitting well with the chairman of the Caricom Sub-Committee on Cricket, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.
“The closing of the year on that score was not a good thing,” PM Rowley said on Saturday’s ISport programme on i95FM.
On December 6, the two territorial boards did not send representatives to the planned shareholders meeting, which was described as “pivotal.” The meeting was to vote on implementing governance reforms recommended by the Wehby Report, a document compiled by a group headed by Jamaican business executive Don Wehby.
The meeting failed to come off because the required quorum was not met.
In a subsequent statement, the two boards stated in part that “the BCA and GCB rejected the Wehby Report on the basis that it seeks to relinquish power from the territorial boards.”
Saying that he was “disappointed” that there was no quorum, Rowley stated that “this signals a reluctance on the part of the establishment in current West Indies cricket to engage the issue and to take hard decisions.”
The Prime Minister added: “I’m afraid that what is appearing to be coming up on the surface is that some people who can influence the outcome are prepared to have the current arrangements remain in place even though we acknowledge that they are not delivering as we would like (them) to…”
Rowley reasoned: “Even though we do not have 100% agreement, what we have agreement on, we could move forward with or, when we acknowledge a problem, that we try to find a way to move forward with.”
However, the T&T PM did not think that there was governmental influence on the positions of the GCB and BCA.
“I don’t think there is any underlying strategic planning on the part of the (governmental) leadership. I think it has more to do with the Cricket West Indies itself and its membership; the territorial leaders where certain strong-willed individuals believe that this direction is not right.” But, he stressed, “the place to do that is at the meeting.”
Adding also that “there is no attempt by Caricom to run West Indies cricket,” he said Caribbean leaders can only use “moral suasion” with the CWI decision-makers.
“We want to encourage people in this period of great risk and possible good rewards to get to the table, take the available assistance, and work as one body. Nobody is going to respect West Indies cricket if we are fractured at the level of the management of the game,” he said.
No sense in disbanding
The Prime Minister used stronger words to describe the recent suggestion by former chairman of the world governing body ICC, Greg Barclay, that it may be time for West Indies to be disbanded as a cricket-playing entity, describing it as “tomfoolery.”
“I’ve never heard more nonsense,” he said, adding: “As a matter of fact, the West Indies as a team is a unique entity in World cricket, and the fact that we have dominated the game for two decades should indicate that the model does work, and we don’t need any advice from anybody telling us that the way to go is with 13 different countries.”
Rowley added: “What they are trying to encourage us to do is to get out because they are aiming to form an elite group of…cricket-playing countries, and you will be ranked by your performance, and therefore, West Indies’ history would come to nought. And rather than try to aspire to where we achieved, we should go down in Division Three or Division Four and scratch our way down there among newcomers.”
He said: “We must reject that…At Caricom, we have taken a decision that…West Indies has played a role, and we’ve paid our dues. And we need to be treated with more respect and have more resources from the ICC so that we can get those resources to bring our game into line with what is required in today’s sport and not abandon our great legacy and our great record.”