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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Cameron: West Indies cricket on the rise again

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20160403

KOLKATA, In­dia–Em­bat­tled West In­dies Crick­et Board pres­i­dent, Dave Cameron, be­lieves the re­gion's re­cent suc­cess on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage shows that West In­dies crick­et is on the rise again, and has al­so giv­en the as­sur­ance that the re­cent pay dis­pute with play­ers has been "am­i­ca­bly set­tled."

He was speak­ing Fri­day af­ter West In­dies beat tour­na­ment favourites In­dia on Thurs­day to reach the fi­nal of the Twen­ty20 World Cup for the sec­ond time in three com­pe­ti­tions.West In­dies Women al­so ad­vanced to the fi­nal of the T20 World Cup for the first time when they de­feat­ed New Zealand Women al­so on Thurs­day.

And with the Un­der-19 Windies side hav­ing cap­tured the ICC Youth World Cup ear­li­er this year, Cameron said it was proof that West In­dies crick­et was "head­ed in the right di­rec­tion."

"It is the be­gin­ning of the re­vival process," Cameron told the Times of In­dia news­pa­per.

"We have put in place a ro­bust sys­tem that will take some more time to churn out the re­sults we want. The suc­cess of our U-19, ladies and men's team proves that we are head­ed in the right di­rec­tion."

Once World cham­pi­ons, West In­dies have slipped to the bot­tom of in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et in re­cent years, fol­low­ing poor re­sults es­pe­cial­ly in the Test and one-day for­mats.

They are ranked num­ber eight in Tests, the low­est of all ma­jor crick­et na­tions and on­ly above Bangladesh and Zim­bab­we, and are ninth in ODIs, re­sult­ing in their non-qual­i­fi­ca­tion for next year's Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy in Eng­land. How­ev­er, Cameron said the WICB had made key struc­tur­al changes which would see the con­tin­ued rise of West In­dies crick­et.

"Pri­or to 2005, we had an am­a­teur­ish set up in first-class crick­et where play­ers on­ly got to play just five four-day match­es in a sea­son. We have now re­placed that with a pro­fes­sion­al set-up and play­ers get to play at least 10 match­es," the Ja­maican ex­plained.

He added: "We have 15 play­ers who are cur­rent­ly con­tract­ed to the WICB. Be­sides this we have 90 oth­ers who are con­tract­ed to the six re­gion­al fran­chis­es. The fran­chise teams cur­rent­ly com­pete in the four-day WICB Pro­fes­sion­al League as well as the one-day WICB Su­per50 Tour­na­ment.

"Cur­rent­ly, 11 women play­ers are cen­tral­ly con­tract­ed. They played some good crick­et to get in­to the WT20 fi­nal for the first time and we hope they will go all the way."

De­spite the re­cent suc­cess, the board has been af­flict­ed by con­tract dis­putes with play­ers. This re­sult­ed in the con­tro­ver­sial aban­don­ment of the Test and lim­it­ed overs tour of In­dia two years ago, and al­so en­dan­gered the cur­rent cam­paign at the T20 World Cup here.

The aban­doned In­dia tour re­sult­ed in the In­di­an Crick­et Board (BC­CI) de­mand­ing US$42 mil­lion in dam­ages from the WICB but Cameron as­sured that this is­sue, along with the oth­er con­trac­tu­al ones with the play­ers, were all now set­tled.

"I am hap­py to say that pay­ments is­sue raised by the play­ers be­fore the WT20 meet has been am­i­ca­bly set­tled. You can see that it is a hap­py dress­ing room," Cameron said.

CMC


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