Any plans for the West Indies to be demoted to a second tier of Test cricket by the International Cricket Council (ICC) would be strenuously resisted by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), president Julian Hunte said yesterday.
Hunte saw it as an attempt to marginalise West Indies cricket and vowed that the WICB “will never allow this to happen.”
“In most of the cricket playing countries of the world, we are the team they like most after their national team,” he said yesterday in a media release prior to his departure tomorrow for a three-day ICC executive meeting in Dubai, starting on Sunday.
“However, we have to use this as motivation to get back to the top of world cricket,” he added.
“Our players must be mindful of this when they go out to play since, if our standing in world cricket does not improve, we might find our options and opportunities severely limited.”
The possibility of a split of Test teams by the ICC was revealed by WICB chief executive Dr. Donald Peters in the same release.
While Hunte is to raise the impact of the lucrative 20/20 Indian Premier League (IPL) and similar new enterprises on West Indies cricket at the Dubai meeting, Peters described the previously unannounced plan for a division of the Test teams as an “even bigger” threat.
“The IPL is the second biggest threat facing West Indies,” he asserted in the same media statement.
“There is an even bigger one. There is a move to limit the first tier of Test playing countries to the top seven which will then leave the West Indies with only Bangladesh and Zimbabwe to play.”
Although he did not elaborate, the issue appeared to have been broached at the most recent meeting of chief executives of ICC member countries that he attended.
The WICB release said that the IPL, the use of technology to review umpiring decisions and the removal of the ICC’s Elite Panel umpire, West Indian Steve Bucknor, from the January Test between Australia and India were on the agenda for the Dubai meeting.
Reiterating what he told me in an interview during the ICC World Twenty20 Tournament in South Africa last September, Hunte said: “We are deeply concerned about the future impact of leagues like the IPL on our cricket particularly when their seasons are in direct competition with our tours or our domestic season.
“We and New Zealand will be the big losers,” he noted. “Already it is clear that three of our players will have to choose between representing teams in the IPL or representing their region.”
Captain Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine Chanderpaul have all signed for the IPL, the first season of which is scheduled from April 18-June 5. The dates conflict with the first two Tests against Australia, from May 22-26 in Jamaica and May 30-June 2 in Antigua.
“Given the amount of money at stake, it already seems to be a foregone conclusion,” Hunte said.
At the auction of contracted players in Mumbai, Gayle fetched US$800,000 to play for the Kolkata franchise for the season. Sarwan went for US$225,000 for Mohali and Chanderpaul US$200,000 for Bangalore.
“We also have the ICL (the rival Indian Cricket League) and again the dilemma faced by our players,” Hunte said. “We just had an example of a player who would have been selected for the West Indies team but who went to the ICL.”
He did not name the player but it is thought to be fast bowler Tino Best who joined the ICL three weeks ago. The second season of that tournament starts next week.
Hunte said he would also raise the issue of Bucknor’s replacement for the third Australia-India Test on the insistence of the Indian team following his controversial decisions in the preceding Test.
“When Steve Bucknor, our premier regional umpire, was removed and replaced during the India-Australia series, I wrote to the ICC asking for information, essentially the reasons why the ICC acted as it did,” Hunte recalled.
“I said at the time that the ICC was setting a dangerous precedent but that before we took a decision on the matter we needed to know more,” he added. “So far, I have not received the information I sought and I consider this an insult to the WICB which is a full-member of the ICC.”
The WICB release said that, on the use of technology to review the decisions of umpires and how that will operate, it “fully supports any innovations in the game that will ensure fairness and improved decision-making”.
