(Trinidad Express) St Lucia’s Prime Minister Kenny Anthony says that all the players who quit the tour of India in October last year should have been fired.
“For my part, I would have started with a new fresh team,” said Anthony, who was speaking at the Caricom Leaders Lecture series hosted on the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies last Tuesday evening. Emphasising that he didn’t think politicians should interfere in the administration of West Indies cricket, Anthony said that Caricom leaders nonetheless needed to review the West Indies Cricket Board of Control and set up a better system. “The WICBC are not answerable to the people of the region,” he said, adding that, once the board’s structure was changed, the politicians should leave it alone.
The St Lucian prime minister was speaking on the topic “Delivered or Denied: The Dividends of Integration”, arguing that the problems in WI cricket were part of a larger breakdown plaguing the Caribbean.
“Caricom is in crisis,” he told the audience who filled most of the auditorium at Daaga Hall. “It is a crisis of our institutions, our societies, our economic models, and our governance.” Referring to the global economic contraction, Anthony said, “What is happening in the Caribbean now, especially the Eastern Caribbean, is traumatic. It has never happened before – never!”
