ST JOHN'S–An­tigua and Bar­bu­da's Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne said yes­ter­day that he "cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­ject" the call for the dis­so­lu­tion of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), to pave the way for the emer­gence of a new gov­er­nance struc­ture.

Speak­ing in his ca­pac­i­ty as chair­man of the Cari­com Com­mit­tee gov­ern­ing West In­dies crick­et, Prime Min­is­ter Browne pre­dict­ed that the re­gion­al game would be plunged in­to "fur­ther chaos and con­fu­sion" if the WICB were to be dis­solved.

The Prime Min­is­ter was ad­dress­ing an au­di­ence which in­clud­ed WICB Pres­i­dent Dave Cameron dur­ing a func­tion in St John's ob­serv­ing 90 years since the WICB be­came a full mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC).

"To­day, I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­ject the call for the dis­so­lu­tion of the West In­dies Crick­et Board and I do so in my ca­pac­i­ty as chair­man of the Cari­com Crick­et Com­mit­tee gov­ern­ing West In­dies crick­et," prime Min­is­ter Browne said.

"I be­lieve firm­ly that to dis­solve the West In­dies Crick­et Board would be to plunged West In­dies crick­et in­to fur­ther chaos and con­fu­sion".

The An­tiguan leader's pub­lic rev­e­la­tion puts him at odds with Grena­da's Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Mitchell, the cur­rent chair­man of CARI­COM's Sub-com­mit­tee on crick­et gov­er­nance.

Dr Mitchell has been at the fore­front of spear­head­ing ef­forts to ef­fect the re­struc­tur­ing of the WICB and ful­ly en­dorsed the re­cent Bar­riteau Re­port which last year rec­om­mend­ed "the im­me­di­ate dis­so­lu­tion" of the em­bat­tled WICB.

The Bar­riteau Re­port was com­mis­sioned by CARI­COM with agree­ment from the WICB and au­thored by UWI Cave Hill Prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Eu­dine Bar­riteau but the WICB re­ject­ed the find­ings.

"In fact I re­ject the no­tion that the prob­lems fac­ing West In­dies crick­et could be ex­clu­sive­ly as a re­sult of gov­er­nance," Prime Min­is­ter Browne point­ed out.

"It does not mat­ter the schol­ars who may have writ­ten the var­i­ous re­ports, but any con­clu­sions that the prob­lems fac­ing West In­dies crick­et is ex­clu­sive to gov­er­nance is flawed".

Prime Min­is­ter Browne's com­ments are al­so like­ly to un­der­mine Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell's ef­forts to fos­ter uni­ty among Caribbean lead­ers in bring­ing about changes to the WICB gov­er­nance struc­ture.

On­ly last week in Bar­ba­dos, Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell re­peat­ed calls for the WICB to re­form it­self while de­liv­er­ing the 19th Sir Frank Wor­rell Memo­r­i­al lec­ture.

But his An­tiguan coun­ter­part has ar­gued that re­vamp­ing the WICB gov­er­nance struc­ture is not nec­es­sary, al­though he ac­cepts that they are weak­ness­es.

Prime Min­is­ter Browne is rec­om­mend­ing that the board and stake­hold­ers strength­en the WICB gov­er­nance struc­ture by en­sur­ing "greater trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty" and "a bet­ter dis­pute res­o­lu­tion process".

"When­ev­er these dis­putes end up in the pub­lic do­main they are lit­er­al­ly dam­ag­ing the im­age of West In­dies crick­et," he said.

"So I, there­fore, call on the board to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure there is a bet­ter dis­pute res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nism in re­solv­ing dif­fer­ences be­tween the board and play­ers go­ing for­ward". (CMC)