Vin­ode Mam­chan

For­mer di­rec­tor of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) Dr Allen Sam­my says that crick­et pun­dits who have been at­tack­ing the board have not done their home­work.

Sam­my said : "Much is be­ing writ­ten about the de­cline of West In­dies crick­et by com­men­ta­tors who refuse to do their home­work. The lat­est pub­lic en­e­my is the West In­dies Crick­et Board and its poor gov­er­nance sug­gest­ing that the crick­et­ing world is leav­ing them be­hind as they twid­dle their thumbs in a mind­less vac­u­um."

He said that the cur­rent board has high­ly re­spect­ed pro­fes­sion­als who have been try­ing their best to take the crick­et out of the dol­drums.

"The con­struct of the Board's 18 per­son's di­rec­tor­ship is a mix of a Pres­i­dent, Vice Pres­i­dent, four In­de­pen­dent Pro­fes­sion­als and two rep­re­sen­ta­tives each from six ter­ri­to­ries (12), not to be con­fused with 12 ter­ri­to­r­i­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Their agen­da is Caribbean Crick­et. How­ev­er, they are mind­ful at all times that they rep­re­sent share­hold­ers and must ex­press the views of ter­ri­to­r­i­al Boards and their stake­hold­ers.

"The Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent may be elect­ed from the pub­lic at large and the four spe­cial­ist di­rec­tors vary with the spe­cif­ic skills re­quired at any giv­en pe­ri­od. At this time, these four di­rec­tors are CARI­COM, rep­re­sent­ed by Ricky Sker­rit (St Kitts), Busi­ness rep­re­sent­ed by Don We­h­by (Ja­maica) and Clif­ford Reis (Guyana) and Bank­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jen­nifer Nero (St. Kitts)."

Sam­my said in­for­ma­tion is in the pub­lic do­main and those mak­ing com­ments should take the time and seek the in­for­ma­tion. "Google their cre­den­tials and stop the old talk about en­hanc­ing Board skills. In ad­di­tion, each of the oth­er di­rec­tors brings spe­cif­ic aca­d­e­m­ic and ex­pe­ri­en­tial skills honed in crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tion.

"There is no ide­al gov­ern­ing struc­ture and copy­ing even mod­i­fied high pro­file com­pa­ny mod­els may not be nec­es­sar­i­ly ap­plic­a­ble to our 16 Caribbean crick­et-play­ing na­tion's en­vi­ron­ment (six ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards com­posed of 15 Is­lands and Guyana). If we ac­cept that clubs-in-com­mu­ni­ties are the bed rock on which West In­dies In­ter­na­tion­al crick­et suc­cess has been shaped, and that this re­mains rel­e­vant, then the chal­lenge is to have a strong WICB which ac­knowl­edges the cen­tral­i­ty of vi­brant ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards act­ing in uni­son on a com­mon de­vel­op­ment agen­da. The cur­rent board struc­ture seeks to rep­re­sent pre­cise­ly this re­al­i­ty.

"There is talk of a more busi­ness ap­proach to or­ga­niz­ing and op­er­at­ing our crick­et. In busi­ness, the out­put is a de­fin­able prod­uct and the bot­tom line is prof­its. In crick­et the prod­uct is skilled play­ers and the bot­tom line is win­ning. It is the ter­ri­to­ries which pro­duce the crick­eters not the WICB. The chal­lenges then are with the 16 sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ries to put out or shut up. His­tor­i­cal­ly, CARI­COM has bobbed and weaved on their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in this re­gard. They still cite the con­struc­tion of sta­dia all over the Caribbean in 2007, but where has been the col­lec­tive CARI­COM com­mit­ment to crick­et over the past eight years?"