BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – A name change is coming for the West Indies Cricket Board as the beleaguered organisation looks to restructure its operations and create a distinct commercial arm.
The WICB will be renamed ‘Cricket West Indies’ and will focus on the governance aspect of the game while a commercial body which will be revealed in coming months, will address the business affairs of the organisation.
President Dave Cameron, speaking in the Cayman Islands last weekend, said this was one of the key strategic changes being undertaken by the WICB as it sought to improve its administration of the game.
“We have resolved to change the name of the WICB and we will be called Cricket West Indies,” Cameron told Cayman Cricket’s Annual Awards Dinner in George Town last Saturday.
“And why Cricket West Indies? Simply, because everybody seems to believe that the Board of Directors – the West Indies Cricket Board – is cricket. Cricket is all of us. It’s in all of our communities, in Jamaica, Barbados and in Cayman Islands and the entire region.”
He added: “We have also created a distinct commercial entity … we will roll that out in the next couple of months as well and that is to ensure that we have our brand identity and commercial platform, very distinct from our governance platform.
So the governance will be Cricket West Indies and we will have a commercial platform.”
The announcement of the changes come just weeks after a CARICOM commissioned Cricket Review Panel recommended the “immediate dissolution” of the WICB, and the instalment of an interim board to run the affairs of the game.
Chaired by Principal of the UWI Cave Hill Campus, Professor Eudine Barriteau, the commission found the WICB to be comprised of a “now proven, obsolete governance framework” and called for the resignation of the entire Board membership, arguing this was necessary due to the demands of the “the standards of corporate, collective accountability.”
Cameron, who said the report was being looked at by the WICB shareholders and would be discussed at a December meeting, said the board was making big strides in the interim especially in the area of finance.
“We recrafted our strategic plan using what we called the balanced scorecard. Our deficit has been reduced from just under US$4 million to under US$2 million now and this year – unaudited figures – we had a surplus of just under three-and-a-half million dollars,” the Jamaican pointed out.
“Our new commercial model sees our players getting 25 per cent of the commercial revenues of the WICB. Last year, we paid our players just under ten million dollars so we’re by no means a small organisation.”
Cameron, however, noted that ensuring the success of the regional team was the most important objective.
There’s still a lot that has to be done … we’re under no illusions that we are where we need to be because all the great things I’ve told you now, we’re still ranked number nine in one-day cricket, number eight in Test cricket and number three in T20, so we know we have a lot of work [to be done],” he stressed.
“And until we start winning, we’re not going to go anywhere.”
