Vin­ode Mam­chan

West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) pres­i­dent Dave Cameron has steered clear of try­ing to ex­plain why the door has been closed on the T&T pair Dwayne Bra­vo and Ke­iron Pol­lard.

The two play­ers have been over­looked since the West In­dies tour of South Africa and some pun­dits have re­marked that they are be­ing pun­ished for their roles in the abort­ed tour of In­dia last Oc­to­ber. Cameron was ques­tioned about their omis­sion from the tour at the WICB's fi­nal Town Hall meet­ing at the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion Build­ing on Fri­day night.

Cameron said the de­ci­sion to choose play­ers was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the se­lec­tors and he left it there. He made it clear that a num­ber of play­ers who have left the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa) will not be vic­timised, as the WICB was a sep­a­rate en­ti­ty from the play­ers as­so­ci­a­tion.

He did, how­ev­er, men­tion: "It is sad to see the play­ers giv­ing up an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have a body rep­re­sent them. This does not mean that those who I am hear­ing left, can­not speak to the board."

Asked if Bra­vo and Pol­lard want­ed to speak to the board, Cameron asked: "For what?"

Pressed fur­ther he said that they would have to un­der­stand that there are rules of en­gage­ment that are in place.

Apart from the Bra­vo and Pol­lard is­sue, Cameron han­dled the meet­ing well, which at times pre­sent­ed him with dif­fi­cult ques­tions.

Queen's Park man­ag­er Jef­frey Guillen asked him how come he was still pres­i­dent of the WICB af­ter his role in the board ac­cu­mu­lat­ing a debt of US$42M. Cameron replied that­what­ev­er de­ci­sion was made to deal with the abort­ed tour was a board de­ci­sion but he took full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as head of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Cameron :"Look­ing at the In­dia sit­u­a­tion and what it has brought, prob­a­bly it had to hap­pen to force change in West In­dies crick­et. We at the WICB is now build­ing a team and not in­di­vid­u­als and we think this is the way to go." One of the points of dis­cus­sion over the In­dia in­ci­dent was the fact that the play­ers went to In­dia with­out signed con­tracts. Cameron as­sured all that the play­ers have al­ready got­ten their con­tracts for the up­com­ing Sri Lankan tour, point­ing to the fact that it was one of the lessons learnt.

The Ja­maican added that the In­dia sit­u­a­tion in terms of the US$42M bill and the sev­er­ing of bi-lat­er­al tours re­main at the same but there is a meet­ing of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) on Oc­to­ber 10 where they are ex­pect­ed to deal with the mat­ter. "We have an ICC board meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 10 and we plan to deal with the mat­ter. Hope­ful­ly when I get back to the re­gion I would be able to re­port pos­i­tive­ly on the In­dia sit­u­a­tion be­cause they are due to tour here next year.

Cameron used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote the work of the WICB and said that all sec­tors of the crick­et­ing fra­ter­ni­ty will re­ceive as­sis­tance from the board.

... Ramdin stats failed him

One of the burn­ing ques­tions that mem­bers of the au­di­ence put to Cameron was the ax­ing of De­nesh Ramdin as cap­tain of the West In­dies Test team. With­out com­ing out out­right and say­ing that Ramdin was dropped for his poor bat­ting form, Cameron said :"Num­bers are a strange thing. I al­ways tell peo­ple that if you use the play­ers was ini­tials but not their own ini­tials and pick a team on num­bers you would be sur­prised as to what you come up with. Ramdin's av­er­age over a pe­ri­od lead­ing in­to his cap­tain­cy showed he was av­er­ag­ing 40. When you take a look at his av­er­age while as cap­tain it is 22. So some­times we have to take a close look at these things in an ef­fort to get an­swers.