The Georgetown Cricket Association (GCA) yesterday refuted statements made by the new Demerara Cricket Board (DCB) via a Guyana Cricket Board (GCA) press release following DCB elections on January 6.
Yesterday at a press conference at the Muslim Youth Organisation (MYO) building, Woolford Avenue, GCA president, Neil Barry senior, refuted the issue of attendance by GCA executives at DCB meetings.
According to Barry, the GCB release stated that senior GCA executives who were on the DCB namely, Neil Barry, Roger Harper and Azad Ibrahim attended five, four and two respectively out of nine meetings held.
Barry a former national opening batsman, said he could not determine if the authors were speaking of one year or two but presented a spreadsheet of the attendance by the trio.
According to the GCA’s document, there were 16 meetings within the period with Barry attending 12, Harper eight and Ibrahim five.
“The meetings were organized in a very ad-hoc manner, and I reference a DCB executive meeting held on Saturday July 3, 2021 where a statutory date was set for the meetings to be held on the first Saturday of every month,” said Barry.
Barry said in actuality, meetings were not held on the statutory date and sometimes the notification, which was mainly by Zoom would come on the same day or just 24 hours before the meeting. That he said forced members to reschedule which was not possible in all cases.
“There were times when the meetings clashed with GCA executive meetings so we were unable to attend due to those reasons,” Barry said.
“Excuses were provided in those cases especially for Roger Harper, who in 2021, had West Indies selection duties.
“Azad had a lot of duties such as the stadium and traveling on government related activities, those were presented but not mentioned.” Barry said meetings attended by the GCA were always rushed and while the agenda spoke of reports from the associations, the DCB President, Bissoondyal Singh deferred the reports for West Demerara and East Bank Demerara Associations.
He said that the GCA was not given the chance to present verbally their submission which he was referred to the Ordinary General Meeting.
On the issue of the GCA members not executing their roles favourably, Barry countered by saying that Harper had submitted a report on cricket development in June, which is documented in the DCB minutes.
As it relates to sponsorship, Barry said he had told those when he was approached, that he was not interested in the post since it was not his strength but was assured that it would be a collective effort.
He said that Ronald Williams had indicated in the form of an apology that Premier Insurance would be sponsoring the Under-15 tournament and had several sponsors.
According to Barry, the tournament was budgeted for two million dollars but only got $150,000.
“Albeit I reached out to several others who were not interested in sponsoring DCB activities because they were not too sure about the board, they were not confident, they wanted to know what programmes the board had and how sponsoring the DCB activities could add value to their product.
They also asked if the board was a legally registered entity, he added.
Barry pointed out that tournaments were also planned in an ad-hoc manner. “Thrown out there at the last minute, which made getting sponsorship harder,” he declared.
He said that the GCA invested heavily in anticipation of an Under-15 tournament being stated, only for the tournament to be pushed back by the DCB and to be played one or two weeks before the Inter-County tournament. Barry also spoke of the failure of the DCB to hand over trophies to the winning teams at the three completed youth tournaments which were all won by GCA.
The GCA also wrote the GCB on the issue of the changing of the DCB youth team after the Chairman of Selectors had handed over the team to the DCB President.
The GCA, he said, is yet to get a response.
Barry also spoke of the Hilbert Foster issue.
“Foster was elected as Chairman of the Cricket Development Committee, a committee which was supposed to have about nine or 10 sub-committee,” he said.
“It was a very inclusive committee where journalists, past players were involved in this with 25 recommendations coming out,” he said.
Nothing was done and Foster was subsequently removed at the GCB level and Director of Cricket West Indies said Barry.
Barry said it appears that there might be a conflict of interest since the GCB president, the DCB president and the East Coast Cricket Board president is the same person.
He said that the DCB had elected Roderick Lovell as chair of the junior selection committee but Lovell, a former Guyana player, was forced to resign as he was also chairman of the GCA selection committee.
Barry said the above notwithstanding, the GCA is still part of the DCB and will continue to do its part to develop players.
