President of the East Coast Cricket Board (ECCB), Bissondyal Singh was yesterday elected to serve as president of the Demerara Cricket Board (DCB) when the body held its annual general meeting and election of office bearers under court supervision.
In the auditorium of the Demerara Cricket Club, Queenstown, three court Marshals supervised “a new era” for the DCB after it was embroiled in legal battles for over a decade.
The Marshals listed the names for the delegates who had submitted by the stipulated February 17 deadline and three of the five associations submitted delegates. Those were the Georgetown Cricket Association (GCA), ECCB and Upper Demerara Cricket Association (UDCA). The East Bank Cricket Association and West Demerara Cricket Association failed to submit their list of delegates.
Former GCB president, Norman McLean was nominated by Claude Raphael and seconded by GCA President, Neil Barry for the post of Returning Officer.
The voting took place by show of hands and the entire committee was installed unopposed.
Former GCA President, Roger Harper nominated Singh for the position as President and was seconded by the GCA’s Azad Ibrahim.
In his acceptance speech, Singh thanked the delegates for placing their trust in him to handle the affairs of the DCB over the next two years and described the elections as “the dawn of a new era.”
“Democracy has returned to Demerara Cricket for good. We intend to have this process, the electoral process at the DCB to be transparent [and] democratic as possible, from now on no media will be locked out, every single thing concerning the management of the Demerara board as well as the selection of our team and cricket development will be made public,” Singh stated.
The new president added, everyone is welcome and open to being asked what is the problem if there is one.
Singh contended that this new body was comprised of people who have cricket experience, even at the highest level of Test cricket and coaching and backed their competency to deliver.
The DCB president reckoned that while this will go down in history, the game should not be played in the courts anymore and should unite and not divide.
He signalled his intention to meet with several stakeholders including Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Charles Ramson Jnr., Corporate Guyana and the Berbice and Essequibo County boards.
The DCB President said that he wanted to “extended an arm” to the other two associations who did not turn up to the elections and welcomed them to the table in order to grow the game.
Meanwhile, Harper and UDCA’s Bradley Fredericks were nominated by Singh for the positions of Vice-Presidents. For the position of Treasurer, Ibrahim was nominated by Singh and seconded by Raymond Barton of ECCB.
Former Assistant Treasurer of the GCB, Pretipaul Jaigobin was unopposed for the position of Assistant Treasurer, while Davteerth Anandjit and Ronald Williams were elected as Secretary and Assistant Secretary respectively.
The other executives elected were GCA’s Barry in the role of Marketing Manager, Barton as Competitions Chairman, Raphael as Public Relations Officer and Azeem “Troy” Khan and Fazal Ishak as Trustees.
