IT was inevitable that the high expectations for the latest review of the management of West Indies cricket would quickly turn into the turmoil that has typified its sharp decline of the past two decades.
The conviction of Grenada Prime Minister Keith Mitchell, head of Caricom’s sub-committee on cricket, that no objections would be raised by West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) president Dave Cameron to the conclusions of the independent panel, chaired by principal of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill campus, Dr.Eudene Barriteau, appeared reasonable enough in the circumstances.
It was, after all, jointly established by the two at a meeting last April; the WICB appointed three of its five members. Mitchell was adamant that Cameron gave the assurance than that the WICB would accept all its points.
In reality, such confidence was misplaced.
Mitchell and St. Vincent and the Grenadines prime minister Ralph Gonsalves, also a member of the Caricom sub-committee, had experience of the contrast between what is agreed to behind closed doors and what subsequently eventuates.
When Dwayne Bravo and Keiron Pollard were dropped after the contentious withdrawal of the team from the tour of India in October 2014 for the subsequent ODIs in South Africa, Gonsalves accused Cameron of reneging on his ‘solemn undertaking’ at a joint meeting in Port-of-Spain that there would be ‘no victimisation or discrimination’ against the players in India.
He called the omission ‘a travesty of justice’ that ‘reeks of village vengeance, discrimination, and victimisation’.
As the clash between Mitchell and Cameron escalated over the similar present discrepancy, Mitchell’s language was also strong.
The Barriteau committee was the third over the past eight years with a similar mandate as the team plunged from No.1 to near the bottom of the international rankings.
The other two, the first headed by the former Jamaica Prime Minister P. J. Patterson, the other by St. Kitts-Nevis Queen’s Counsel Charles Wilkin, were established by the WICB itself. Both recommended sweeping changes to its makeup, not far removed from those of Barriteau’s group; the directors ignored the main recommendations of both.
The upshot was that the organisation remained basically the same as it was when formed in 1927, with a directorate of two members each from the six territorial shareholders under a president and vice-president.
The stark difference between the Barriteau report and the others was its uncompromising criticism of the WICB’s governance as ‘obsolete’, ‘antiquated’ and ‘anachronistic’ and its harsh conclusion that the board ‘should be immediately dissolved and all current members resign’ while an interim committee named a new board ‘to install a new governance framework’.
As appropriate as they were, they were not what the WICB wanted to hear, whether or not it was party to the committee’s formation. It would obviously be as inclined to reject it as the earlier WICB boards had done in their cases.
For Cameron, to yield would be a blow to his determined fight to attain the highest position on the English-speaking Caribbean’s most prominent sporting body.
His tactics in getting there and his autocratic way of running the WICB have made him widely unpopular with the cricket public. This has only strengthened his resolve. His defiant, widely quoted response on the internet at the height of the India tour fiasco, one of his many crises, revealed his mood.
“They’ve criticised you. They’ve doubted you. They’ve lied on you. They’ve done all they can do, but one thing they can’t do is stop you,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
It is clear that he will confront even the regional governments to ensure he won’t be stopped by his latest challenge. It will soon be apparent whether he is carrying it too far this time.
He has become embroiled in an increasingly intense, personal clash with Mitchell over the call for an urgent reply from the WICB to the Barriteau report. Cameron’s position was that the WICB directors would meet to discuss the document on December 5 and 6 before setting out a reply at its scheduled quarterly meeting on December 12.
Mitchell countered that the matter was so pressing it required a far earlier meeting. Cameron did not heed the request.
Mitchell seethed at what he called Cameron’s ‘amazing level of disrespect’ in a letter to Caricom Secretary-General Irwin LaRoque that reiterated the WICB’s reasons for continuing to decline the call for earlier meeting.
‘The level of lack of understanding of the importance of this is quite frightening and I don’t think I should hold back any words,” Mitchell said at the Organization of East Caribbean States (OECS) summit in Dominica.
As the row escalated during the week, it was apparent neither side would budge from its position. The subsequent effects are potentially dire.
The governments own eight of the 12 international stadiums. The exceptions are Sabina Park in Jamaica, the property of the Kingston Cricket Club, and the Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad that belongs to the club of the same name.
Should the stalemate reach such a drastic stage, the governments have the option of withholding the use of the facilities by the WICB, jeopardising future international series.
Such action would be extreme. It could be counterproductive; fans, as exasperated as they may be at the WICB’s management, are unlikely to be happy over losing the prestige of staging Test and ODI matches.
Cameron put the WICB’s case in an address to the Cayman Islands Cricket Association last Monday.
He stressed that the WICB is a sporting organisation. ‘We’re not saying we don’t want the governments to participate,’ he explained. ‘We’re saying that the organisation and its leadership must be selected free of interference from governments.’
With the support of the directors from the six territorial boards that are shareholders in the WICB, it was a clear hint that a court suit would follow any action by the governments against it.
The argument is surely not over. It is likely to be expanded with the participation of all Caricom’s prime ministers on one side, the immovable Cameron and the WICB directors on the other.
In the meantime, the actual cricket continues to struggle for improvement.
The team is bound for three foreboding Tests in Australia, a few weeks after defeat in both Tests and all three ODIs in Sri Lanka. That is what should be occupying the minds of both parties.
