Attorney-at-law Arudranauth Gossai, who has been at the forefront of trying to resolve Guyana’s administrative cricket deadlock has commended the subtle approaches taken by President of Cricket West Indies (CWI) Ricky Skerritt to resolve the matter here.
Although many pundits are of the view that CWI should take a more forceful approach to ensure operations of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) return to a state of normalcy, Gossai said that he understood Skerritt’s limitations.
“He means well…I wouldn’t say that he hasn’t done enough… as far as he could have done within the confines of the law, he has been doing an excellent job in relation to resolving the Guyana situation,” Gossai said of Skerritt’s approach.
Just after he was elected CWI President in 2019, Skerritt met with the various cricket stakeholders in Guyana.
The main purpose of the visit fell under the umbrella of repairing stakeholder relationships here which was one of the key points of the “Cricket First Plan” put forward by Skerritt and vice president Dr Kishore Shallow in their bid which helped to oust Dave Cameron as president.
Skerritt’s objective is to have a generally accepted and functioning cricket board in Guyana – one void of controversial court battles.
“Skerritt is a very careful individual and I agree with the manner in which he has approached the situation in Guyana to a great extent because these guys have an order from the Court Appeal which allows them to remain as office holder… That was prior to the 2020 unlawful elections,” Gossai told Stabroek Sport.
“In light of that Court of Appeal order, Mr. Skerritt was right because assuming he came into Guyana to intervene then it could have been said that he’s ignoring that Court of Appeal order and that he’s disregarding our laws and so on. He cannot refuse to acknowledge their presence.”
According to Gossai, after the GCB held what he described as an unlawful election in January last, he penned a letter the CWI boss expressing his frustration.
Skerritt, he said, brought the matter to longstanding GCB Secretary Anand Sanasie’s attention and indicated that he [Skerritt] was concerned because it wasn’t a letter from a stakeholder, but rather from a lawyer.
Given the emergence of COVID-19, Gossai said he was not sure whether there were any further engagements between the CWI president and Sanasie.
Meanwhile, a source close to the issue told Stabroek Sport there is a greater need for CWI and other regional boards to address the ailing situation here.
“There is talk within the region that those interested Guyanese stakeholders should approach the other boards to move CWI to take a more active role and I believe that was the blueprint to follow prior to COVID,” the source said.
“Actually, there was an invitation from some of the other boards to help resolve this matter because they are saying this fiasco in Guyana cannot continue because it is affecting cricket in the region so the other boards are concerned about what is happening here and are willing to intervene but there must be a trigger,” the source added.
