By Tony Cozier
The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) outlined plans to professionalise umpiring in the region at a meeting in Barbados on Wednesday with West Indies Cricket Umpires Association (WICUA) president Hartley Reid.
WICB corporate secretary, Tony Deyal, said yesterday that chief executive Donald Peters had “discussed the possible establishment of a task force to advise on setting up a system, based on the ICC model (i.e. different panels) to professionalise umpiring in the region.”
It was, he added, part of the WICB’s strategic plan “which will be widely disseminated for public response in the next few days.”
Deyal said that Peters and Reid had agreed “to facilitate an urgent meeting of the WICUA executive” and “subsequently, on a mutually convenient date, to meet with WICUA.”
The discussions followed the WICUA’s decision to boycott Carib Beer Cup matches after the WICB replaced two of its members, Kasso Dowlath and Hayden Bruce, on the season’s regional panel.
Reid yesterday confirmed the decisions and said that “for all intents and purposes,” the boycott was over.
It meant WICUA members would again be available for the Carib Beer Cup final between Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago in Kingston April 24-28.
He said the action had never extended to the international matches during the current tour by Sri Lanka.
Deyal revealed that, at an earlier meeting, WICB officials met with the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) to “discuss making cricket on radio available to all the countries and on our or CMC website so that anyone in the region (or outside of it) who want to hear cricket can do so”
Citing mainly lack of sponsorship, radio stations in several territories no longer carry ball-by-ball commentaries on regional matches as used to be the case.
For the first time, there was even no such local coverage of the first Test of the Sri Lanka series in Guyana.
