On Thursday, former West Indies Cricket Board, (WICB) CEO Bruce Aanensen slammed the board saying its many directors were interfering with the management of the game even as the board.
Aanense, who resigned from his CEO post, amidst controversy, said there are too many directors on the WICB board and it was causing problems to the players and management.
“Eighteen directors, each having his own opinion, makes it impossible for the working members of the board to do their jobs properly,” Aanensen told the Caribbean Media Corporation.
“The situation at the WICB is not conducive to productivity and if there isn’t a change the problem will continue to exist,” he added.
Aanensen’s comments mirror, to some extent, some of the recommendations of the Governance Review Committee which had called on the WICB to not only change the name of the entity but also to restructure it.
The WICB had appointed a three-member committee to review the structure and operations of the board. The committee was led by former Jamaica Prime Minister PJ Patterson and included members Sir Alister McIntyre and Ian Mc Donald.
The committee has since handed in its 138-page report with recommendations including that the WICB must strengthen its financial arm given its current poor financial situation; that it should employ industrial relations experts to deal with issues concerning it and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA); that an audit of club cricket in the region be conducted; that a two-division professional cricket league should be implemented; that it must set up a West Indian Colleges League and that it should change its name in an effort to remodel its image and to adapt to modern sporting management and administration.
Some of the suggestions had previously been published in the media and it is widely believed that the report would have formed the basis of future plans by the WICB.
However, WICB President Julian Hunte recently announced that a five-year strategic plan was to be implemented next year to complement the report. “My intention is to ensure that in addition to the Patterson report, we produce a strategic plan for the development of West Indies cricket from 2008 to 2013 that will map out what we are going to do with West Indies Cricket,” Hunte told journalists putting to rest fears that the report may have been left to gather dust.
“From schools cricket right through to Test cricket, the question of how we select venues for matches [and] what we do with coaches, what we do with coaches in schools, how we treat community cricket. I am committed to putting a plan on the table by March next year,” he added.
However, with the WI senior team slipping to a 10-wicket defeat at the hands of South Africa `A’ yesterday; with all the reported bungling of WICB officials before, during and after every tour and with the standard of regional tournaments dropping annually, one hopes that the implementation of some of the recommendations of the Patterson Committee would be done sooner, rather than later.
