The Caribbean’s crick­et lead­ers have all dis­missed the sug­ges­tion by out­go­ing chair­man of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC), Greg Bar­clay, that the West In­dies should be dis­man­tled from be­ing one en­ti­ty and the coun­tries play as sep­a­rate na­tions. He al­so sug­gest­ed that the ICC should al­so abol­ished of Full Mem­bers sta­tus.

Bar­clay’s com­ments were swift­ly re­ject­ed by Conde Ri­ley, the Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent, as “mad­ness,” and he sug­gest­ed the in­di­vid­ual ter­ri­to­ries put mea­sures in place to im­prove crick­et in the re­gion.

Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Pres­i­dent Dr. Kishore Shal­low said it is “un­for­tu­nate.”. He said, “We (West In­dies) have a rich his­to­ry, a rich lega­cy that is al­most un­matched in in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, and the con­tri­bu­tion that West In­dies has made to glob­al crick­et is there in record to show.”.

The West In­dies played its first Test in 1928 and went on to dom­i­nate the sport in the 1980s. Led first by Clive Lloyd, fol­lowed by Sir Vi­vian Richards and Sir Richie Richard­son, the West In­dies did not lose a sin­gle Test se­ries be­tween 1980 and 1995, af­ter win­ning the first two ICC ODI World Cups in 1975 and 1979.

In an in­ter­view in Wis­den, a crick­et on­line pub­li­ca­tion on Wednes­day, Bar­clay high­light­ed the plight of Crick­et West In­dies, which has faced sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty over the last few years, par­tic­u­lar­ly height­ened dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Un­der the ICC’s mod­el from 2024-27, West In­dies will re­ceive a less than a five per cent share of ICC earn­ings.

Bar­clay said, “You look at the West In­dies, I love what they’ve done for the game, but is the West In­dies in its cur­rent form sus­tain­able?” said Bar­clay. “Is it time for them to break in­to each of their is­lands?

“The thing is, can they [West In­dies] af­ford to [con­tin­ue to play Test crick­et]? They bare­ly can make their books bal­ance now. What they’ve achieved in crick­et is phe­nom­e­nal when you think that they are a group of dis­parate is­lands that don’t re­al­ly have any­thing in com­mon, oth­er than crick­et, and yet they’ve held them­selves to­geth­er for that pe­ri­od of time as the West In­dies.

CWI, the gov­ern­ing body of the team, con­sists of the six crick­et as­so­ci­a­tions of Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, Ja­maica, the Lee­ward Is­lands, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the Wind­ward Is­lands and takes great pride and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in grow­ing, guid­ing, and pro­tect­ing crick­et through­out the 15 Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean coun­tries that form the West In­dies, rep­re­sent­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly by the West In­dies men’s, women’s, and age-group teams.

He added, “The West In­dies would say why do we go from full mem­ber to 14 as­so­ciates [if we split in­to is­land na­tions]? But that is about re­al­ly get­ting the gov­er­nance thing right. Crick­et is al­most unique. You’ve got this group of full mem­bers, and you’ve got the rest. Sure­ly, just dis­pense with that and go, OK, some­one’s num­ber one, and some­body’s num­ber 120. And you can move up and down, get ranked on per­for­mance, on and off the field. The high­er up you go, the more mon­ey you get, the more ex­po­sure you get. And if you’re not per­form­ing, then you go down.”

The West In­dies has al­so pro­duced a pletho­ra of world stars, in­clud­ing Learie Con­stan­tine, Sir Garfield Sobers, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Michael Hold­ing, Ever­ton Weekes, Clive Wal­cott, Court­ney Walsh, Bri­an Lara, Curt­ly Am­brose, and Chris Gayle, and a host of oth­er great crick­et­ing leg­ends over the six to sev­en decades of the sport.

Shal­low said, “World crick­et would not have been the same with the in­volve­ment of West In­dies. I find it to be quite un­for­tu­nate that the for­mer chair would be so ir­re­spon­si­ble in his com­ments.”

The West In­dies has con­tin­ued to set records over the years, even in the re­cent past when its grip on world crick­et start­ed to slack­en. 418 stands as the high­est suc­cess­ful run chase in a Test, set by West In­dies in 2003, when West In­dies de­feat­ed Aus­tralia at the An­tigua Recre­ation Ground af­ter hun­dreds from Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul and Ramnaresh Sar­wan. 

Lara’s 400 is still the high­est in­di­vid­ual Test in­nings score, a feat he re­claimed af­ter Aus­tralian Matthew Hay­den held it for six months. Lara has al­so scored 501 not out to hold the high­est score in a first-class match.

Records by West In­dies con­tin­ued as oth­er for­mats grew, with Dwayne Bra­vo’s 631 wick­ets rep­re­sent­ing the most in T20’ while Gayle has the most runs (14,562) in the same for­mat, and his 22 hun­dreds stand as the high­est num­ber, dou­bling the num­ber of hun­dreds of sec­ond-placed Babar Azam. Last week, fast bowler Jay­den Seales pro­duced a spell of four wick­ets for five runs from 15.5 overs.

“We be­lieve that the fu­ture is with a West In­dies team play­ing across all for­mats.”

Ri­ley sug­gest­ed the in­di­vid­ual coun­tries need each oth­er, es­pe­cial­ly with the small pop­u­la­tions, and added, “We have to put to­geth­er pro­grams in each of the is­lands, a prop­er pol­i­cy.”

Mean­while, crick­et is the on­ly team sport that the coun­tries in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean play as one col­lec­tive team of tal­ents against oth­er crick­et­ing na­tions such as Eng­land, In­dia, Aus­tralia, Pak­istan, Sri Lan­ka, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Zim­bab­we, and South Africa.