The T&T Crick­et Board (T&TCB) has con­demned, in the strongest pos­si­ble man­ner, the re­cent ac­tions of the West In­di­an crick­eters who abort­ed their crick­et tour of In­dia.

The se­vere cen­sure came on Sat­ur­day when the T&TCB held their 58th an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing which was well-at­tend­ed with close to 40 del­e­gates par­tic­i­pat­ing at the Al­loy Lequay Ad­min­is­tra­tive Cen­tre at Bal­main, Cou­va.

The mo­tion was moved by na­tion­al se­nior team man­ag­er Manohar Ram­saran, a nom­i­nat­ed mem­ber of the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive, and sec­ond­ed by Sec­ondary Schools Crick­et League (SS­CL) rep­re­sen­ta­tive Su­ru­j­dath Ma­habir.

The mo­tion as read by Ram­saran is as fol­lows: "While our board recog­nis­es the rights of the play­ers, we feel that the de­ci­sion to abrupt­ly end the tour has brought col­lec­tive shame to the peo­ple of the Caribbean while al­so bring­ing the game in­to dis­re­pute.

"We ac­knowl­edge that the stain of this ac­tion will be dif­fi­cult to erase and our board pledges its full sup­port to the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) in its ef­forts to mit­i­gate the myr­i­ad neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions that will em­anate from same."

The mo­tion came af­ter a some­times heat­ed three-hour meet­ing, and was met with strong and to­tal sup­port with the no­table lone dis­sent­ing voice be­ing that of the for­mer con­tro­ver­sial pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Play­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine.

Ram­nar­ine at­tend­ed the meet­ing with ex-na­tion­al cap­tain Daren Gan­ga in tow as del­e­gates of the Na­tion­al League. They were both un­suc­cess­ful in their bid to un­seat in­cum­bent T&TCB pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath in na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions one year ago.

The West In­dies crick­eters, led by One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo, who is a Trinida­di­an, shocked the in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et world when they de­cid­ed to pull out of the In­dia tour af­ter the fourth ODI in Dharam­sala two Fri­days ago.

They are protest­ing the sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween the WICB, the re­gion­al crick­et au­thor­i­ty, and WIPA, the union rep­re­sent­ing the play­ers which is be­ing blamed for keep­ing their mem­bers in the dark about terms of the agree­ment which they claim re­sults in their los­ing a sig­nif­i­cant part of their spon­sor­ship earn­ings.

Last week the T&T di­rec­tors on the WICB, board pres­i­dent Bas­sarath and nom­i­nat­ed ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Bal­dath Ma­habir, met in an emer­gency ses­sion in Bar­ba­dos where a four-point plan was for­mu­lat­ed to re­solve the is­sue.

The Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI) al­so met last Tues­day in Hy­der­abad as its Work­ing Com­mit­tee met to dis­cuss the fall­out from the im­passe. Al­though it is re­luc­tant to make a le­gal claim of loss­es amount­ing to US $65 mil­lion from the abort­ed tour, the BC­CI de­cid­ed to sus­pend all fu­ture tours in­volv­ing both teams.

In­dia were sched­uled to tour the Caribbean four times in the next eight years but the BC­CI of­fi­cials, with their de­ci­sive ac­tion, have ef­fec­tive­ly scut­tled the 2016 tour in­volv­ing four Test match­es; and in 2017, when they were sched­uled to play five ODIs and a T20 fix­ture.

The T&TCB al­so said that they have sent off a let­ter to the new Min­is­ter of Sport Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith ask­ing for an ur­gent meet­ing to dis­cuss the cur­rent crick­et im­broglio among oth­er press­ing mat­ters af­fect­ing the lo­cal game.

Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly three T&T crick­eters cur­rent­ly lead the main re­gion­al teams: De­nesh Ramdin is the Test team skip­per; Dwayne Bra­vo leads the One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al side; and Meris­sa Aguilleira is the cap­tain of the women's re­gion­al squad.