President Irfaan Ali must explain himself

Sep 10, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

President Irfaan Ali appeared in the commentary booth with Ian Bishop on Friday Sept 7 2025 and made several absurd claims about West Indies cricket.

The one which interests me the most is that, “we were legislated out of cricket”.

Irfaan Ali, I don’t know if you understand what you are saying. The entire cricketing world knows that West Indies cricket has been in a free fall for four decades. In the 1990’s, leadership and board of directors blamed players for poor performances. In the 2000’s management, blamed pitches, playing conditions, lack of infrastructure as well as players. A few years ago, somebody finally woke up and stated “West Indian cricket is corrupt and the entire system needed to be rebuilt.

Sometime in 2012, there were structural changes and the renaming of West Indies Cricket Board to “Cricket West Indies”. At that time, I told my friends that you can put lipstick on a pig, the pig is still a pig. Back then, there were cries of corruption and lack of management “ know how”. People like Clive Lloyd were given roles he had no business holding. Lloyd was a decent cricketer but those skills do not translate into managing an organisation. Another example of putting lipstick on the pig was bringing Otis Gibson as coach. Gibson did not help improve cricket, his ineptitude in managing people further degraded our cricket.

President Ali were you saying the “legislation to rename WICB to Cricket WI is the cause of the decline in cricket at the highest level? I was astounded with your claims in the commentary booth as a president whose administration has been marred in corruption controversies that you highlighted the decades of mismanagement without understanding the correlations.

How can you as president make such irresponsible claims? I ask please explain what you mean, when you stated, “we were legislated out of cricket.” Watching the interaction between you and Ian Bishop as you were making these claims, I noticed Bishop looked like he wanted to fall in a hole and disassociate himself from those comments because it was Ian Bishop who has been calling for a revamping of the management structure. Michael Holding would agree because he too was lambasting the decades of poor outcomes. President Ali, please help RHW people understand which camp you stand in- the WICB of old or Cricket WI?

The global cricket audience expects a response to these questions.

Regards,

Gopaul Rampersaud

Chapel Hill, NC

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GCB, President Irfaan Ali, West Indies cricket, WICB

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