Disband CWI and replace it with an interim management committee

Jul 17, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – At the conclusion of the England vs. West Indies T20 match at Hampshire in June, a number of deeply distressed English spectators enquired of me if WI cricket would ever return to the glory days. They said that it was sad to see the state of WI cricket and expressed their love for Caribbean cricket.

It is ironic that while I was standing on Marshall Drive, one of them reminded me that Gordon Greenidge and Malcolm Marshall played there and asked what needs to be done to change the fortune of West Indies cricket. I told them firstly that Sammy and Reifer need to be fired and the West Indies Cricket board needs to be disbanded and the former greats need to take over managing WI cricket.

Yesterday, after the fruits of their folly resulted in the greatest embarrassment of West Indies cricket in history the Doctor Shallow, in a desperate move to save face, have called Messers Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Vivian Richards and Brian Lara to accompany Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Desmond Haynes and Ian Bradshaw to perform magic and arrest the three (3) decades of destruction of West Indies cricket implemented by Hunte, Cameron, Skerritt and himself.

I don’t care if Shallow resurrect Sir Frank Worrell and Don Bradman and even bring Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis along with the current WI legends, or who the hell he feels like, it cannot resurrect the destruction cause by Hunte, Cameron, Skerritt and himself (the worst of them all). Unless the West Indies Cricket Board is dismantled with all those so-called directors kicked the hell out and that vampire parasitic secretariat is restructured to realistic standard, it will all be window dressing and a waste of time.

I can recall the Patterson team making certain recommendations which the then West Indies Cricket Board Czar Cameron flatly rejected and fully supported by the current Antiguan Prime Minister after which Antigua got a number of test matches, the conversion of Stanford ground to a so called High-Performance ground and the parasitic CWI Secretariat remaining in Antigua. It was more about maintaining control of WI cricket and boosting Antigua tourism than overall WI cricket development.

From since the disastrous Hunte era, it was clear that the agenda was to wrest the control of cricket by the small islands, make sure that as much Windward and Leeward Island players play test cricket and have as much as possible international cricket played in these small islands. This Small Island plan was never clearer than when Sammy was selected as coach ahead of Shivnarine Chanderpaul. And then this Doctor called Shallow came up with a master plan to have Sammy as Coach and chief selector for all formats.

And what did Sammy do? He dismantled a young team who defied expectations and levelled test series against Australia and Pakistan in their respective countries, something that was not achieved in decades, and recycled the same tested and proven Browne failures including appointing Chase who could not make the test team for 3 years as captain. The result was a 3-0 trashing and a monumental disgraceful embarrassment that time will never erase. And that will forever be the Legacy of Shallow and Sammy.

In 2019, I had called for Guyana to leave West Indies cricket and go it alone because I was absolutely clear then that West Indies cricket was going to get worse and I pointed out that West Indies was the only test playing nation who did not have a Cricket academy nor a structure to develop players to international standards to beat other nations.

It was clear for all to see that most of the WI batsmen had glaring technical deficiencies especially with the moving delivery and the Board had been doing nothing to fix that deficiency through technical support. What happened at Sabina Park was full exposure of that deficiency for the world to see and for perspective, it is worth mentioning that the current batting coach a Bajan guy named Floyd Reifer averaged 9.6 in test, hence it would not be inaccurate to ask the question whether it was a case of the blind leading the blind?

West Cricket administrators are more concerned with the trappings of power, maintaining a parasitic Secretariat and paying friends super salaries rather than utilizing revenue to provide technical support by identifying and working with players to correct their deficiencies.

Therefore, the following needs to happen;

• Sammy, Bascombe, Reifer, Chase and Warrican must go immediately, that should be non-negotiable, followed by the Dr. Shallow after handing over to an Interim Management committee comprising of Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Vivian Richards, Sir Gordon Greenidge, Sir Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Larry Gomes.
• KPMG should be called in to audit the books immediately and come up with a lean management structure to run the Secretariat which apart from 3 staff at the office, the others must work virtually.
• Caricom Governments must be approached to integrate investment in school cricket coaching programme directed by West Indies Cricket Management Committee fully utilizing the countless qualified coaches currently in the West Indies.
• The Interim Management committee must be made to provide a plan to Caricom Committee on Cricket for the long-term development of cricket which Caricom can support financially with the implementation of a regional sports programme starting with school cricket coaching.
• Caricom Governments must support and finance at least three (3) proper cricket academies managed by the Interim Management Committee.
• Have a coaching team work with a core of current young players to help them improve their game with Chanderpaul as the batting coach and Sir Curtley Ambrose as the bowling coach. Carl Llewellyn Hooper should be the overall coach. Brian Lara’s batting expertise should be fully utilized.

As long as West Indies cricket remain under the current management structure, system and cricket administrators it matters not who they call, noting will change. They are like a bad disease. They need to be kicked the hell out.

Yours truly,

Eric Whaul

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• CWI, Eric Whaul., Interim management, Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Vivian Richards, West Indies

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