(Jamaica Observer) A Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) resolution urging former West Indies captain Chris Gayle be reinstated to the regional team was rejected at a West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) board of directors meeting in St Lucia at the weekend.
However, president of the JCA Lindel Wright remains hopeful that the issue will be resolved in short order.
“As far as I am concerned, I hope that the Chris Gayle matter will be resolved soon,” said Wright, who returned from St Lucia yesterday.
Wright said he expects the issue to be discussed when the WICB president Julian Hunte visits Kingston soon to meet with Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.
Wright said no date for the visit has been confirmed, but Hunte has committed to apologise to Simpson Miller in person for what has been deemed inappropriate content in a statement issued by the WICB secretariat last week.
Gayle has not played for the West Indies since the ICC World Cup in Asia last year following a quarrel with the cricket authorities. The WICB secretariat continues to demand that Gayle should apologise for remarks he made last year about Windies coach Otis Gibson and the WICB.
But Gayle supporters contend that he was not given a hearing by an established disciplinary committee, and in any case, he has been punished enough.
The JCA and Simpson Miller responded furiously to comments from the WICB secretariat which substantially said the Jamaican prime minister had spoken from a position of ignorance when she addressed issues involving regional cricket at a JCA Awards Dinner last weekend.
Simpson Miller had weighed in on the controversial non-inclusion of Gayle in the West Indies team since early 2011 as well as the non-inclusion of Jamaica as a venue for the upcoming Australia tour of the Caribbean.
Regarding the Gayle issue, Simpson Miller is reported to have said: “I am very disturbed by how long this matter has gone on without a resolution. There has been no trial and no hearing; and as we know from the popular maxim — justice delayed is justice denied. It is not just to have one of the world’s leading cricketers being excluded from test cricket. This matter demands an amicable resolution as quickly as possible.”
However, the WICB said the Jamaican prime minister had not been properly “briefed” by its member association the JCA.
“The WICB does not believe that the Prime Minister is suggesting that Mr Gayle be returned to the West Indies team without withdrawing his comments. This would be tantamount to a member of the Jamaican cabinet lambasting and deriding the leader of the cabinet and fellow cabinet colleagues and being returned to that august body without any accountability for his or her actions,” the statement from the WICB said in part.
The JCA, which has previously being accused of not doing enough to resolve the issue involving Gayle promptly, voiced its “complete rejection and condemnation” of the eight-paragraph statement from the WICB. The JCA called on Hunte to “retract the unfounded and unwarranted attack against the Honourable Prime Minister of Jamaica and to move immediately to resolve the Chris Gayle impasse, as we believe he has been more than reasonably punished”.
At a press conference last week Simpson Miller accused the WICB of being “rude” and “crude” and promised to raise the issue at the level of CARICOM.