Vin­ode Mam­chan

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) and West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) di­rec­tor, Az­im Bas­sarath says that the fact that the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) has de­cid­ed to keep their an­nu­al meet­ing in Bar­ba­dos, shows that they have con­fi­dence in the WICB.

Bas­sarath said: "This de­ci­sion to come to the Caribbean for the an­nu­al meet­ing was tak­en af­ter the is­sues we had with the Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI). It rep­re­sent­ed to me that the ICC still had faith is us as a ma­jor crick­et­ing na­tion and they want­ed to show that by com­ing here."

The meet­ing takes place in Bar­ba­dos from June 22-26 and will see over 50 del­e­gates from the crick­et play­ing na­tions around the world, gath­er in Bar­ba­dos for the meet­ing. Pres­i­dent of the ICC N Srini­vasan said : "We are de­light­ed to be tak­ing the ICC An­nu­al Con­fer­ence to the West In­dies for the first time and I am sure both the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) and the is­land of Bar­ba­dos will prove to be ex­cel­lent hosts for these im­por­tant meet­ings."

Bas­sarath said, "These meet­ings shape the fu­ture of the game and we will be hav­ing it here for the first time which speaks vol­umes. Our pres­i­dent Dave Cameron went across to Dubai for the last meet­ing and was able to make a suc­cess­ful ap­proach to have the meet­ing here, as well as the Un­der-19 World Cup which will al­so come to the Caribbean."

Bas­sarath and his board re­cent­ly sup­port­ed for­mer Test play­er Joel Gar­ner for the post of pres­i­dent of the WICB but lost out, when Cameron re­tained his post for an­oth­er term, win­ning the elec­tions 8-4. He has, how­ev­er, pledged his full sup­port in mov­ing for­ward.

"The TTCB made a choice at the last elec­tion and it was great to see that we were able to de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly host an elec­tion. Every­one is free to sup­port who­ev­er they want but hav­ing said that Dave is the pres­i­dent and we are go­ing to give him full sup­port in mov­ing for­ward.

"He is the man at the helm and we are all there to im­prove every­thing about our crick­et and he knows that we will sup­port the move­ment for­ward. We might not agree on all things but it is great to see that we can put things aside and work for the bet­ter­ment of crick­et in the Caribbean.

"We have some very good tal­ent on the WICB and we are go­ing to do all in our pow­er to get our crick­et back up to the stan­dard we would like. We have start­ed with a num­ber of won­der­ful as­pects al­ready in terms of the PCL and the Nagi­co and we will be look­ing to make it even big­ger and bet­ter.

"When the ICC comes to Bar­ba­dos, they must feel sat­is­fied that their choice was a great one and we at the WICB will be mak­ing sure that it is a suc­cess."

The event is be­ing host­ed by the WICB in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bar­ba­dos Tourism Mar­ket­ing In­cor­po­rat­ed (BT­MI).