The collective yawn and its accompanying synchronized sigh occurring across the Caribbean last Sunday morning whilst West Indies cricket fans perused their Sunday newspapers was not in response to a review of the recent tour of England, but rather to the announcement that Cricket West Indies (CWI) was now in receipt of the Wehby Report.
The Wehby Report, which was commissioned by the CWI after the Ricky Skerritt administration came to office following the ousting of Dave Cameron at last year’s elections, is a governance review of the operations of the CWI. Confused West Indian cricket fans probably paused after reading the caption whilst trying to figure out how many such reports have been tabled before by previous administrations. Three? Four?
The Wehby Report is in fact the fifth management review presented to the regional institution in seventeen years.
Firstly, there was the Lucky Report in 2003 which reviewed the negotiations between Cable and Wireless, the then major sponsor of West Indies Cricket, and the WICB (the predecessor of CWI), and the decision which led to the telecommunication giant being replaced by its arch rival Digicel . Following the Board’s inept response to the findings of the three member committee, Justice Anthony Lucky, then serving as a member of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, resigned from the WICB where he was head of the Code of Conduct and Disciplinary Committee, as the WICB chose “to criticize the [Committee’s] findings in a self serving manner,” rather than meet with it.
“I have had enough of the lack of transparency and accountability from those in the WICB who are contemptuous of dissenting views and I cannot any longer work with them…” Justice Lucky was quoted as saying in an interview with the Trinidad Express newspaper.
It was the beginning of a pattern of behaviour by the WICB which would be replicated three more times over the next thirteen years. As each new review suggesting a change to the archaic structure of the WICB was presented, the Board often responded in a contemptuous manner, fighting tooth and nail to defend its way of doing business.
In 2007, the Patterson Report arrived on the desk of the WICB. The 139-page report, produced by the former Jamaican Prime Minister P J Patterson, Sir Alister McIntyre and Dr. Ian McDonald laid out a comprehensive framework for restructuring the way the game was being administered in the region. The former Prime Minister would later lament that he had wasted a year of his life preparing a document which was then ignored by the entity that had commissioned it. The WICB’s response a year later to a four-page letter from the Patterson Committee enquiring why the region had been kept in the dark as to the outcome of the WICB’s deliberations and the fate of the report, was to point out that it had failed to deal with the many challenges facing the game in the region.
“”Among these issues [not addressed by the report] are the negotiation of players’ rights, intellectual property rights of cricketers, trade negotiation, the financing of international cricket, the issue of technology and the development of players and, importantly, the issue of television and internet broadcasting rights, “ WICB’s reply to the letter stated. Once again, the board was dancing around the actual issue at hand.
Next there was the Charles Wilkin Report which was presented in 2012, ironically, once again commissioned by the WICB, to review its governance structure. The St. Kitts-Nevis Queen’s Counsel immediately resigned from the WICB’s Governance Committee once he realized that his report was destined to suffer the same fate of Patterson’s, gathering dust on a shelf in a storeroom. Wilkin charged that the directors “wanted to preserve at all costs all of their positions on the board.”
Following the crisis that erupted in the wake of the West Indies abandoning their 2014 Tour of India and the Board of Cricket Control of India slapping a US$41.97m lawsuit for damages, the Caricom Prime Ministerial Committee on the Governance of West Indies Cricket got involved and appointed a committee to review the then current governance structure. The committee which was chaired by UWI Cave Hill Principal, Professor Eudine Barriteau, included Sir Dennis Byron, Dwain Gill, former West Indies wicketkeeper Deryck Murray and Warren Smith, and presented its report on 15th October, 2015.
The exhaustive report was damning in its review of the WICB’s “anachronistic, antiquated and obsolete” governance structure and called for its immediate dissolution and for it to be replaced by an interim management committee, noting that,” These two key measures are absolutely necessary in order to transform and modernize the governance, management, administration and the playing of the game.”
Dave Cameron, stoutly resisted any challenge to his position as head of the West Indies board. He accused the report of making “findings and recommendations…not supported by facts” whilst adding that, “it was wrong to blame governance of the WICB for the team’s performances on the field.” At the same time Cameron announced the formation of a panel of experts to assess the proposals not implemented by the earlier reports presented by Lucky, Patterson and Wilkin. The panel was to be chaired by Don Wehby, a Jamaican businessman, and at the time a senator, and included Ricky Skerritt and Guyanese Clifford Reis. Of course, under Cameron, nothing of significance came out of that exercise.
Now, here we are in 2020, and once again, West Indies cricket fans are confronted with yet another report. This time around, The Task Force for Corporate Governance included UWI Vice Chancellor Hilary Beckles, Charles Wilkin QC, Deryck Murray and Jamaican businessman O K Melhado, prominent and familiar names throughout the region.
The 36-page Wehby Report has recommended that the CWI undertake “comprehensive reform” and reduce the size of its board whilst calling for greater background in gender and skill set composition. It has also, among numerous other suggestions, proposed a reduction in the number of committees from twelve to five. These sentiments are merely echoes of the Patterson and Wilkin reports which the fans have heard several times over the years.
Whilst the Patterson Report languished for years, the Australian, New Zealand and South African cricket boards were adapting to modern times and effectively putting light years between their game and the one in the Caribbean. Does the Skerritt Administration have what it takes to make the harsh changes and propel us into the modern age? Only time will tell.
