ST JOHN'S–West In­dies Crick­et Board pres­i­dent, Dave Cameron, has made no apol­o­gy for his con­tro­ver­sial lead­er­ship style but says mu­tu­al re­spect must be the crit­i­cal el­e­ment in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween him­self and se­nior play­ers.

Dur­ing his tenure as pres­i­dent, the Ja­maican has come un­der fire from some play­ers and crit­ics who have of­ten lam­bast­ed his lead­er­ship ap­proach but the re­gion's chief crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tor pushed back on the idea that like­abil­i­ty was im­por­tant in achiev­ing har­mo­nious re­la­tions with the West In­dies team.

"The play­ers don't play for Dave Cameron. The play­ers play for West In­dies and for the re­gion," Cameron was quot­ed by the Ob­serv­er news­pa­per as say­ing on a ra­dio sports show here this week.

"My style is what it is and you don't have to like your boss to work with him. Once you can re­spect each oth­er's po­si­tion, then I think we could move for­ward."

Cameron's hands off ap­proach was blamed for the col­lapsed tour of In­dia two years ago which re­sult­ed in an im­passe with the pow­er­ful In­di­an Crick­et Board (BC­CI) and a sub­se­quent claim of US$42 mil­lion in dam­ages.

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Ralph Gon­salves, who helped me­di­ate the im­passe be­tween the board and the play­ers dur­ing that dis­pute, al­so de­scribed Cameron's lead­er­ship as "poor" and "em­bar­rass­ing" and ar­gued he need­ed to take a break from his cur­rent role and re­turn when he had de­vel­oped more "ma­ture, re­newed skills of lead­er­ship."

And Twen­ty20 star, Dwayne Bra­vo, slammed him as "ar­ro­gant and im­ma­ture" for his re­la­tion­ship with the team dur­ing the suc­cess­ful Twen­ty20 World Cup cam­paign ear­li­er this year.But Cameron, who will short­ly be seek­ing a third con­sec­u­tive term at the helm, says he was dri­ve in large part by his re­spect for the play­ers.

"I've al­ways had a lot of re­spect for the tal­ents of our play­ers and for­mer play­ers and that's why we do what we do," he point­ed out.

"I've been in crick­et for well over 35 years. It's not some­thing I start­ed do­ing last week, so I have a very great and deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the game and for our leg­ends, which is why I do what I do."

Last month, the WICB moved to im­prove its re­la­tions with play­ers by host­ing them in a sym­po­sium in Fort Laud­erdale. The event was aimed at im­prov­ing di­a­logue on con­tro­ver­sial is­sues like the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing/Col­lec­tive Bar­gain­ing Agree­ment, and play­er el­i­gi­bil­i­ty.Cameron said the suc­cess of the ven­ture would on­ly be as­sessed with time.

"Where we are will be bet­ter known when we see the re­sults of the dis­cus­sion," he not­ed.

"The ma­jor is­sue is al­ways around the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of the play­ers to par­tic­i­pate in West In­dies crick­et, and we had some very fruit­ful dis­cus­sions and some ideas.

"I am ex­pect­ing some kind of a draft or sug­ges­tions or rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing through to the WICB for us to re­view."

CMC