While one can’t deny the WICB’s short comings

Nov 05, 2015 Sports

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The proposed Governance of Cricket by CARICOM may not be supported

By Sean Devers
You have to be blind or totally oblivious to what is happening administratively for the development of West Indies cricket not to notice that West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) is far from well run and has many short comings and internal wrangling.

However, after carefully reading CAICOM’s final report of the review panel on the Governance of Cricket which was sent to the WICB and which Kaieteur News obtained a copy of, I believe that the combination of the CARICOM and the Patterson’s reports produces another academic paper which will most likely not get enough support to see it being implemented.
The author of the report suggested that the Board of Directors of the WICB resign immediately and be replaced with an Interim Management Committee (IMC).The same thing was done in Guyana resulting in more confusion than resolution.
The report also recommends that a governing Council of 23 be appointed which would then select 15 Directors to manage the Board’s affairs. This is a very strange recommendation if the suggestion is to reduce the number of Directors.
It took three months of Consultations, interviews, deliberations and meetings by a five-member panel of CARICOM Citizens appointed by the Prime Ministerial Committee on the Governance of West Indies Cricket.
The panel was headed by Chairman V. Eudine Barriteau and included former West Indies wicket-keeper and the first secretary of WIPA Deryck Murray, Grenada Women team Coach Dwain Gill, Warren Smith and Sir Dennis Bryon.
The main mandate of the Panel was to review the administrative and Governance structure of the WICB and submit its recommendations through the CARICOM Secretary-General to the Chairman of the Cricket Governance Committee Dr. Keith Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada.
While I agree with most of the contents of the report, especially the section which deals with the removing of the two-day fixture and the scrapping of the U-19 formats for women’s tournaments, I was a disappointed that nothing was mentioned of the disbanding of the regional under-19 three-day format at a time when the WICB says they want to improve West Indies’ Test cricket.

The change in the structure seems too drastic and demotes the directors below CARICOM, who are on top, WIPA, Business, Legends and the Territorial Boards.
The Windwards and Leewards voted as two entities each but the new proposed structure gives each Island in the Windwards and Leewards individual voting rights, while Guyana has been divided into Counties which could mean that Demerara, Berbice and Essequibo could have individual votes in the new structure.
The Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) has two Directors on the WICB, each with one vote but under the proposed structure the GCB could have one vote with one each from three counties.
It is understood that the WICB, who has confirmed receipt of the report, will soon have their AGM. The WICB would most likely not support such structure which takes away their power and hand it to the 23-member Governing Council. This could bring us back to ‘square one’ in terms of finding a solution for the rapidly deteriorating quality of West Indies cricket both on and off the field.
The report says it has reviewed the state of West Indies cricket, particularly it governance arrangements and conclude challenges, not specifically with the leadership per se, but with the governance structure that is antiquated and incapable of addressing the social, economic and cultural realties of cricket in the twenty-first century Caribbean.
The report added that cricket is now an economic sub sector and a multi-million dollar International sporting and business industry.
The WICB and Territorial Boards have been able to ignore the extent to which their operations lack transparency and accountably because the current structures do not respect the basic tenets of good governance within their operations.
The report went on to the say that the WICB and its attendant executive, managerial and administrative framework are incapable of turning around West Indies cricket.
“Our main recommendation is that the Board should be immediately dissolved and all current members resign, while an Interim Board is selected to work with a change management expert to install a new governance framework,” the report concluded.
Under this WICB, the Franchise system was introduced with a core of players being paid to train and while I agree the female players are making us proud and should be better compensated, one must remember that our girls are among the first in the world to be provided with central contracts by their Board.

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