Permission was granted for cricketers in training for the CT20 to use the National Stadium at Providence, not the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) says Sport Minister Dr. Frank Anthony.
“While the administrators are fighting it must not prevent a national team from going and play. So, while we work out a mechanism by which they play, we will deal with that administratively, but the players must prepare. So permission has been granted to the players to practice at the facility, because they are one and the same. Because we don’t want a team to go there and they are not conditioned to play”.
According to the Sport Minister despite separate teams being named by the GCB and the IMC the players are mostly the same.
“The people who are right now practicing, the two teams the members are the same. So it is the same pool we don’t have an exhausted pool, we can chose different people. But one way or another we want or team to participate in the competition”.
Asked what will be the fate of the four players who were named by the GCB and not by the IMC Dr. Anthony said, “As I understand all of them are training but at the point when they need to go a decision will be made”.
This, he said, does not mean that the issue is over, but said he is still awaiting a response from the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) on the last letter he sent, which reiterated that the GCB is not a legal entity. He restated that officials of the GCB are not allowed to operate and if they do then they would be doing so in violation of a court order.
The Minister said too that the cricket legislation will be presented to the National Assembly on Monday for the first reading.
“And in the legislation we have the constitution. We are doing that because the legal minds that have been working with us have advised us that this is how we should go about it. Now as the government we don’t see this as a very contentious thing”.
According to Minister Anthony there are also plans to consult with opposition parties so as to have consensus on the matter when it moves ahead in parliament.
“… we are putting a provision in there that once the legislation is passed that we go to election in the shortest period of time”.
Dr. Anthony said that the Government only stepped in after the Chief Justice had ruled that the GCB was a non-entity.
“I know that a lot of people are saying that government is interfering in cricket, but in the ICC rules itself the ICC says that if a board is dysfunctional and it defines dysfunctional to mean there is fraud or have fraudulent elections and so on that government must intervene. They have no problems with that and that is what we did. So based on the constitution of the ICC and the courts of Guyana that is what we did”.
Both the GCB and the IMC submitted teams to the WICB, however the GCB’s team was accepted, since the West Indies Board continues to say that it recognizes the GCB despite government’s pleas that the body is illegal.
