PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Influential former West Indies Players Union boss, Dinanath Ramnarine has thrown his support behind CARICOM’s decision to insist on the dissolution of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).
Ramnarine said he believes the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board should lead the way in the process.
The often controversial Trinidadian, who led WIPA for 10 years before quitting in 2012, said international sporting organisations were all restructuring and the WICB needed to follow suit in order to be effective.
“Every other organisation world-wide is having a look at its governance structure. Many of them are actually being told that they have no choice but to change their governance structure,” Ramnarine told the NewsDay newspaper here.
“We’ve seen a complete restructuring of FIFA. Most recently the BCCI (Indian Cricket Board), the court mandated them that they change their governance structure and accept [their] recommendations.”
He continued: “If you look at the governance structure of the WICB and the regional boards, they have remained the same throughout. If you look at the various regional boards, some of them are not having elections. Some of them, their constitutions are unfair and undemocratic.”
CARICOM announced Friday it would be standing by its Cricket Governance Committee’s recommendations that the WICB should be “immediately dissolved” and an interim board appointed along with a change management specialist who would oversee the restructuring.
The regional grouping said the recommendations had been endorsed by Heads of Government during their conference in Belize last week, and all options would be explored to ensure implementation.
Last December, the WICB flat out rejected the main recommendations, calling the investigation of the Cricket Governance Committee “limited in scope.”
But Ramnarine, whose numerous battles with the WICB are well known, said territorial boards should initiate the restructuring process by voluntarily disbanding.
“I think the Trinidad Cricket Board should signal the need for change, and they should immediately disband themselves, and hopefully ask [an] independent body to put an interim committee and review the constitution,” he advised.
“I think each of the regional boards should actually allow for a process like this to take place. [We should] allow the stakeholders then to come forward and elect people based on proper governance and so on, based on a proper constitution.”
