Vin­ode Mam­chan

One of T&T's di­rec­tors on the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), Bal­dath Ma­habir has re­signed from the board with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.T&T Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Ma­habir sent in his res­ig­na­tion let­ter to the WICB and thanked them for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have served at the high­est lev­el of ad­min­is­tra­tion of crick­et in the re­gion.

The T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) will con­vene a spe­cial meet­ing to­day to se­lect a re­place­ment who will join cur­rent di­rec­tor Az­im Bas­sarath at the WICB.Ma­habir, who has served as pres­i­dent of Clarke Road Crick­et Club for many years, made a bid for vice-pres­i­den­cy of the WICB at their last an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing ear­li­er this year but was de­feat­ed by in­cum­bent Em­man­u­al Nan­ton.

Ever since Ma­habir lost at the polls it was ev­i­dent that his fu­ture at the board was go­ing to be short lived. In his res­ig­na­tion let­ter Ma­habir out­lined the rea­son be­hind his move."In re­cent times there has been an in­crease in 'an­ti' WICB sen­ti­ments across the Re­gion. From Prime Min­is­ters, for­mer play­ers, jour­nal­ists, ed­u­ca­tors and es­pe­cial­ly the fans � our rep­u­ta­tion and our busi­ness method­olo­gies have tak­en a pound­ing.

"As a for­mer Di­rec­tor, I sat back � read, watched and lis­tened. In all my years as a pas­sion­ate crick­et fan, I do re­call that the WICB and its pre­de­ces­sor, the WIBC, have tak­en a bat­ter­ing from the crick­et lov­ing pub­lic. In good times and in bad. I have long re­solved that it is the great in­ter­est of the fan that in­formed this crit­i­cism of our crick­et's lead­er­ship. I have al­so long re­solved that man­ag­ing the crick­et for­tunes of a team, on and off the field, that con­sists of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of 16 sov­er­eign na­tions will al­ways be dif­fi­cult, full of un­seen chal­lenges and im­pos­si­ble to be sat­is­fy­ing to all. As a re­sult one will nev­er have the sup­port of all of the peo­ple all of the time.

"How­ev­er, in the re­cent past, this in­car­na­tion of the WICB has had to en­dure even more ver­bal on­slaughts than some of its pre­de­ces­sors. The events that have at­tract­ed these neg­a­tive out­pour­ings have not al­ways been the sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the WICB, but the onus of clean­ing up af­ter the mess, falls square­ly on its bur­dened and at times un­der re­sourced shoul­ders. And this the or­gan­i­sa­tion must un­der­stand.

"Hav­ing said that, one must rec­og­nize that the WICB has been less than sat­is­fac­to­ry in oth­er ar­eas. The man­age­ment of the busi­ness has been un­pro­fes­sion­al, tardy or lax in many in­stances and this, cou­pled with the very pub­lic spats with our play­ers � men and women � have ac­ti­vat­ed an in­crease in the quan­ti­ty and deci­bel counts of voic­es against the ac­tions of the Board.

"As a Di­rec­tor, one must lis­ten to the voice of the peo­ple, as what we are do­ing, while di­rect­ing a pri­vate com­pa­ny, im­pacts strong­ly on a pub­lic good. I have read, lis­tened, con­versed and been lec­tured to by many, in and out of the game, friends, com­plete strangers, fel­low crick­eters, politi­cians and busi­ness peo­ple. All have been dri­ven by their wan­ing pas­sion for West In­dies Crick­et. They are not hap­py.

"As a re­sult, I have de­cid­ed to step back from the for­est, for it seems that I need to look again at the trees. Maybe be­ing with­in for the past six years, I have be­come lost in the for­est- and what is need­ed is a view from an­oth­er place, get an­oth­er per­spec­tive. Six mil­lion West In­di­ans can­not be wrong.

"This large­ly in­formed my de­ci­sion to re­sign as a Di­rec­tor of the WICB. I re­main both com­mit­ted and con­cerned about the fu­ture of West In­dies crick­et and while I am a very pas­sion­ate sup­port­er of our great West In­di­an tra­di­tion I am guard­ed­ly op­ti­mistic of what to­mor­row may bring. I now join the spec­ta­tors in the gallery."