Vin­ode Mam­chan

The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) is look­ing for more match­es for the re­gion­al team this year, in an ef­fort to boost rev­enue.

A source close to the WICB told the T&T Guardian that the re­gion­al team is like­ly to make a trip to Bangladesh lat­er this year. This trip was not on the Fu­ture Tours Pro­gramme (FTP) but it is un­der­stood that the WICB wants to get the team over to Bangladesh af­ter their tour of Sri Lan­ka in Oc­to­ber/No­vem­ber. The se­ries is ex­pect­ed to be short, with match­es on­ly in the lim­it­ed overs and T20 for­mats.

Pres­i­dent of the WICB, Dave Cameron, when con­tact­ed, did not con­firm or de­ny this fact, say­ing: "The WICB is al­ways look­ing for more match­es for the West In­dies team."

The WICB di­rec­tors will meet with Cari­com crick­et com­mit­tee to­day and on the agen­da is the bill of US$41.95m that is owed to the Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI) over the abort­ed tour last year.

Grena­da Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Mitchell will chair the meet­ing, which will al­so be at­tend­ed by Ba­hamas Prime Min­is­ter Per­ry Christie, the cur­rent Cari­com chair­man; An­tigua & Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne, chair­man of the Cari­com Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Sub-Com­mit­tee on Crick­et; and St Vin­cent & the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves.

The BC­CI has cut all bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions with the WICB since that ill-fat­ed tour and has giv­en dif­fer­ent dead­lines along the way to get back the mon­ey. To date they have not, and the WICB has not pub­licly giv­en an up­date on the mat­ter.

T&T Guardian un­der­stands that at the last AGM, time ran out and the di­rec­tors could not touch the fi­nance re­port and hence they were not brought up to scratch with the In­dia mat­ter. Pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) and WICB di­rec­tor Az­im Bas­sarath con­firmed that they did not dis­cuss the board's fi­nan­cials at the last meet­ing but a meet­ing will be con­vened soon to dis­cuss it.