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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

WICB says no to free movement in WI cricket

by

20140714

The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) re­cent­ly adopt­ed a num­ber of pro­pos­als sent in by crick­et op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor Richard Py­bus and the on­ly one they struck down was his idea of hav­ing re­gion­al play­ers move freely among re­gion­al crick­et teams in the Re­gion­al Four-Day tour­na­ment.

The Eng­lish­man Py­bus who was re­cent­ly brought in­to the post had sug­gest­ed that for­eign play­ers be al­lowed to play for oth­er coun­tries de­spite not be­ing a cit­i­zen of that coun­try. This idea would have tak­en the crick­et down the same road as the Li­ma­col Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL)T20, where play­ers from across the re­gion could rep­re­sent any coun­try that shows an in­ter­est in them.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial of the WICB : "While we un­der­stand the rea­son­ing for Py­bus sug­gest­ing that we al­low free move­ment of play­ers amongst the re­gion­al team, we are cog­nisant of the fact that coun­tries want to re­tain their iden­ti­ty."

"Py­bus made the rec­om­men­da­tion af­ter study­ing the cur­rent state of West In­dies crick­et. The stan­dard of re­gion­al crick­et is not very high and this has been blamed for the demise of the West In­dies team.

"A fur­ther look in­to the struc­ture of the tour­na­ment re­vealed that it is too short and there is ex­pect­ed to be an ex­pan­sion of the Re­gion­al Four-Day tour­na­ment next sea­son.

"Al­so, the stan­dard of some of the teams was way too low and this led to many one-sided games which is not good for the tour­na­ment. By al­low­ing play­ers that free move­ment, teams would be beefed up and this would lead to bet­ter qual­i­ty crick­et, which would lead to bet­ter play­ers com­ing through for the West In­dies team."

The of­fi­cial added: "The idea was dis­cussed by the ex­ec­u­tive of the WICB, which as you know has rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all the ter­ri­to­ries in the Caribbean and they over­whelm­ing­ly ob­ject­ed to this idea. Some of the guys were al­so say­ing that with the na­tion­al iden­ti­ties lost, the al­ready low turnout at First Class games will be even low­er and this would work against the game as well.

"It was a case of six of one and half a dozen of the oth­er. In the end while it was gen­er­al­ly agreed that the move would in­crease the com­pet­i­tive­ness and qual­i­ty of play, the na­tion­al iden­ti­ties of the coun­tries took prece­dence."

On­ly this week­end, it was an­nounced that the name T&T would be tak­en out of the T&T Red Steel that cam­paigns in the Li­ma­col CPLT20 tour­na­ment be­cause there were play­ers on the team that did not come from this coun­try.


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