West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) is ask­ing West In­dies Crick­et Board Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) Dr Ernest Hi­laire to apol­o­gise for the state­ments he made dur­ing the pan­el dis­cus­sion at the Cave Hill cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies last Tues­day night in Bar­ba­dos. WIPA ex­pressed in a press re­lease that it sees the com­ment by Dr HI­laire that the Windies team is the least ed­u­cat­ed of all the Test play­ing teams as out­ra­geous and dis­re­spect­ful and re­veals a mis­un­der­stand­ing of the con­cept of ed­u­ca­tion and of what it takes to be a suc­cess­ful crick­eter. �

"We on­ly need to cast our mem­o­ries back to sev­er­al of our most suc­cess­ful crick­eters who may not have been 'aca­d­e­m­ic' in the con­ven­tion­al sense, but who were in­sight­ful and sharp thinkers and whose abil­i­ty to un­der­stand and think on the the­o­ret­i­cal di­men­sion de­mand­ed by the game of crick­et, earned them their place in the an­nals of crick­et his­to­ry," the WIPA re­lease stat­ed in part.�"Dr Hi­laire's words puts West In­di­an play­ers at risk of dis­re­spect both at home and abroad. The world has been told that some West In­di­an play­ers are un­e­d­u­cat­ed, un­able to com­pete on the world stage ef­fec­tive­ly, mer­ce­nary and in­ca­pable of im­prove­ment. Ob­vi­ous­ly all play­ers need the sup­port of their Board but this CEO has cer­tain­ly giv­en the im­pres­sion that the WICB may have writ­ten off some of the re­gion's play­ers," it con­tin­ued.

"This has se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions with the most im­me­di­ate be­ing that the CEO of the Board has lit­er­al­ly giv­en to the op­po­si­tion words of con­tempt to be ut­tered on and off the field as a psy­cho­log­i­cal tool against the West In­dies. It is dif­fi­cult to con­ceive of Dr Hi­laire's coun­ter­parts any­where in the crick­et­ing world act­ing in such a man­ner. "Equal­ly shock­ing is the fact that the CEO of the WICB made such re­marks in a pub­lic fo­rum par­tic­u­lar­ly in the mid­dle of an in­ter­na­tion­al se­ries. Even the fu­ture play­ers did not es­cape Dr Hi­laire's ut­ter­ances as he stat­ed that half of the Un­der-19 play­ers could bare­ly read or write. What he did not com­ment on were the find­ings as to the per­for­mance of West In­di­an ju­nior teams in­clud­ing the U-19s, which have been cred­itable, and why no so­lu­tion has been found over the last 15 years to deal with the ob­vi­ous prob­lems these young crick­eters en­counter as they move from the ju­nior to the se­nior lev­el.�

"The WICB is charged with pro­vid­ing such a so­lu­tion and has failed and con­tin­ues to floun­der in bridg­ing the gap as these young crick­eters try to go to the next lev­el. Does Dr Hi­laire know that the over­all lit­er­a­cy lev­el of U-19 crick­eters from oth­er Test play­ing coun­tries is any dif­fer­ent or is it that those crick­et boards have done their jobs and craft­ed the en­vi­ron­ment for suc­cess for all of its play­ers? "Iron­i­cal­ly, Dr Hi­laire's words point to a fail­ure of the very in­sti­tu­tion that em­ploys him since it is the WICB who has the man­date to de­vel­op crick­et (and by ne­ces­si­ty crick­eters)�in the re­gion.

"If, as he says, an acad­e­my was need­ed for the last ten years, and the WICB has not cre­at­ed one (de­spite the rec­om­men­da­tion of�many in­clud­ing the Pat­ter­son re­port) the ques­tion which nat­u­ral­ly aris­es is whether the Board has been do­ing its job. "One need on­ly re­mind one­self of the fact that since Dr Hi­laire has as­sumed his po­si­tion as CEO of the WICB that the num­ber of first class match­es has been re­duced."�WIPA calls on Dr Hi­laire and the WICB to apol­o­gise.�"That is the very least that they can do. Dr Hi­laire has spo­ken and in so do­ing has high­light­ed se­ri­ous de­fi­cien­cies and short­com­ings of the WICB. "The ball is in the WICB's and Dr Hi­laire's half, let's see how they play it. In any oth­er re­spon­si­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion a CEO that pub­licly dis­par­ages the com­pa­ny's prod­uct would have se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer from the Board and share­hold­ers."