AS has become routine through its several crises over the past decade, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has again been urged to seek Caricom’s help in resolving potentially its most destructive.
In a letter to WICB president Dave Cameron, addressed to ‘Your Excellency’ and dated October 23, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves specifies the “preemptory and premature termination” of the West Indies tour of India.
While recognizing the “sole judiciary authority of the WICB to address the mountain of difficulties at hand”, he recommends the urgent assembling a three-member Caricom group to help in finding “satisfactory ways out of the many-sided impasse” that it currently confronts.
It would comprise Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne, the current chairman of Caricom, Grenada’s Prime Minister Keith Mitchell and former Jamaica Prime Minister P.J.Patterson.
He cited the “profound interest in West Indies cricket” of Mitchell, a former Grenada player who has previously arbitrated in disputes between the two organisation, and Patterson’s “heroic historic engagements with West Indies cricket and the WICB (that) are legendary and productive”.
Patterson headed a committee on the governance of West Indies that presented its extensive report, widely referred to as the “Patterson Report”, to the WICB in October, 2007. He has since complained that its most critical points have never been implemented.
Gonsalves also put himself forward “to assist in any appropriate capacity”, noting that there were other qualified persons in both the public and private sectors who could be called on.
He noted that he had been “centrally involved”, along with former Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer and Patterson in resolving “the celebrated stand-off between WICB and Mr. Chris Gayle” in 2012. Former captain Gayle was not picked for the West Indies for 18 months because of a dispute with the WICB.
Gonsalves suggested four main subjects for discussion between the WICB and his projected Caricom group.
Two concern the specific issue of the abandonment of the Indian tour. They are the resolution of the current dispute between the WICB and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) and the settlement of the “many-sided tug-and-pull” between the WICB and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)
Two are more general. They would concentrate on the sustainable finding of West Indies cricket and the renewal of dialogue between the WICB and Caricom’s Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on cricket on “further possible reforms in the management and administrative systems of WICB and West Indies cricket”.
Gonsalves expressed doubts that such “a huge and complicated matter” could be handled in an ad hoc manner or by the WICB alone.
“This is an extraordinary enterprise which takes us ‘beyond the boundary’”, he wrote. “The satisfactory and sustainable resolution of the composite problematic calls for exceptional leadership, a well-articulated strategic path and a bundle of wise and feasible tactical approaches”.
“The ultimate goal is wrapped up in a process for the survival, consolidation and renaissance of West Indies cricket,” he added.
West Indies cricket has been this way before.
Caricom, under Prime Minister Mitchell, brokered an end to a disagreement between the WICB and WIPA over players’ contracts when Digicel replaced Cable & Wireless as sponsor that threatened participation in a triangular ODI series in Australia early in 2005.
Caricom again stepped in to secure a provisional agreement between the players and the WICB that led to the 2009 strike for the home series against Bangladesh in 2009 and the subsequent Champions Trophy in South Africa. The accord allowed a full strength West Indies team to undertake a tour of three Tests and a triangular ODI series in Australia in 2009-10.
Caricom’s 32nd summit in St. Kitts in 2011 mandated its sub-committee on cricket to engage WICB and WIPA that were involved in another one of their disputes.
In 2012, Caricom once more was given the task of sorting out the controversy over Guyana government’s replacement of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) with its Interim Management Committee.
The issue drags on, causing Tests against Australia and New Zealand to be shifted away from Guyana, as scheduled.
