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The cricket debacle

Dec 11, 2012 Editorial, Features / Columnists

 

When the government contended that the Guyana Cricket Board had poorly supervised the game locally and had not allowed for transparency in its dealings to the point that there was the suspicion that there were irregular dealings and acts of dishonesty, it decided that the Board, as constituted, had no place in the administration of the game.
The Attorney General moved to the courts and got an order that allowed the government to seize the books. Ever since, it has found that whatever efforts it had planned are not finding favour with the world’s cricketing authorities, including the ruling body, the International Cricket Council (ICC).
What has the Guyana Government done? It fashioned an Interim Management Committee (IMC) to supervise local cricket to the exclusion of the Guyana Cricket Board. Heading this Committee was the man who took West Indies cricket to the heights, Clive Lloyd.
And as if it was a foregone conclusion that the IMC was actually the legitimate body, the government went about selecting a team to represent Guyana. But it was here that it ran into its first hurdle. The cricket lords insist that the management of cricket must be in private hands and that government has no role.
Then came the sanctions. The cricketing authorities decided to apply sanctions. If Guyana persisted with Government running local cricket, then it would have no option but to remove all international matches from Guyana and possibly ban local players from ever representing the West Indies.
This would hurt Guyana, which spent some US$30 million to construct and to maintain the National Stadium at Providence.  Not only is it one of the best Test-playing grounds in the region, it is also one of the best equipped.  It allows play within minutes of the heaviest downpour and its boundaries are of international standards.
This is just one of the stadiums built by the regional governments, and then President Bharrat Jagdeo made the point that the ICC and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) cannot expect Governments to provide the facilities and not have a say in the operation of these facilities and in the very sport for which these facilities were built.
But that is just the case. The Guyana Government is finding out that it should have no say in the administration of cricket in Guyana. It did move to the courts to challenge the operations of the Guyana Cricket Board, especially since the organization had become a body with many splinter groups, all claiming to represent the various groups that comprise the Guyana Cricket Board.
None can deny that the Guyana Cricket Board needs a complete overhaul. However, this overhaul is more in the mind than it is likely to be a reality. Using the High Court ruling, the Guyana Government is seeking to table legislation that would give it the right to disband the current Guyana Cricket Board and put another in its place. The West Indies Cricket Board says that this cannot happen.
What is more is that the government wants to ensure that there is an administrative head in the person of the Minister responsible for Sports. One would have expected that with the firm decision by the ICC and the WICB that the government would have kept politicians as far away as possible from the proposed arrangement.
But to its credit the government is seeking political consensus on this decision. It is holding consultations at the widest possible level, having travelled the length and breadth of the country to talk to people about the proposed new face of local cricket administration.
And while all this is going on the existing Guyana Cricket Board is going about its business. The result is the embarrassing situation of two entities providing the West Indies Cricket Board with two teams to represent this country. And this current cricket board is duly represented on the West Indies Cricket Board. The IMC has no such recognition.
One is getting the feeling that to prove its point, rather than roll over and die, the Guyana Government is going to test the resolve of the WICB and the end result could be either rewarding for the government or embarrassing.

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