BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Conde Ri­ley, said on Thurs­day the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body had es­tab­lished a “high-pow­ered” com­mit­tee to ex­am­ine the rec­om­men­da­tions put for­ward re­cent­ly by the In­de­pen­dent Task Force for Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance Re­form for West In­dies crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ri­ley, a promi­nent Crick­et West In­dies di­rec­tor, told a me­dia con­fer­ence that the com­mit­tee would car­ry out “surgery” on the 36-page gov­er­nance re­port with a sense of “ur­gency” and ex­pect­ed to be able to sub­mit its find­ings with­in a month.

“We are in the process as a board of putting to­geth­er a group to do a surgery on the pro­pos­als,” Ri­ley said.

“Our com­mit­tee that we have put to­geth­er will look at it, come back to the board and then we will make our sub­mis­sion.

“I re­mem­ber the last re­port was the Bar­riteau Re­port which said they would dis­solve Crick­et West In­dies – it can­not be done in law. I’m not a lawyer … but I know you can­not take over a com­pa­ny.

“The on­ly body that can do that would be the share­hold­ers and all six share­hold­ers would have to agree to that. If one says no, it’s over.

“But we will re­port to our mem­ber­ship and the peo­ple of Bar­ba­dos in due course once that com­mit­tee does its surgery on this re­port.”

The BCA is one of six con­stituent boards of CWI cur­rent­ly mulling over the re­port which was sub­mit­ted last week by task force chair­man, Ja­maican busi­ness­man and sen­a­tor Don We­h­by.

Among the rec­om­men­da­tions is a re­duc­tion in the size of the board from its cur­rent to­tal of 18 mem­bers to 12, and the in­clu­sion of at least two women to re­flect di­ver­si­ty.

The re­port al­so calls for a de­crease in com­mit­tees from 12 to five and a re­defin­ing of the roles of the pres­i­dent and vice-pres­i­dent to strength­en their non-ex­ec­u­tive na­ture.

Ri­ley, who has of­ten been at odds with the cur­rent Ricky Sker­ritt-led ad­min­is­tra­tion, said he had no is­sues with re­duc­ing the size of the board once the ex­ec­u­tive func­tions were car­ried out ef­fi­cient­ly.

“If they say – and again the share­hold­ers would have to agree to this – you re­duce the board in­stead of hav­ing two di­rec­tors per share­hold­er you have one, once you have the ex­ec­u­tive arm func­tion­ing prop­er­ly I have no dif­fi­cul­ty with that,” Ri­ley ex­plained.

“But as I said, we’re go­ing to deal with it as a board, take the ad­vice of the com­mit­tee which we’ve put to­geth­er and the com­mit­tee is a fair­ly high-pow­ered one.

“We have asked that this thing be dealt with AS­AP so I hope that with­in a month, we will have a re­port if not soon­er.”

The task force was com­mis­sioned by Sker­ritt, fol­low­ing his un­seat­ing of three-term in­cum­bent Dave Cameron last year, mak­ing good on a cam­paign promise to re­view the gov­er­nance struc­ture of CWI once elect­ed.

We­h­by’s com­mit­tee com­prised an em­i­nent group of Caribbean per­son­al­i­ties with Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) vice-chan­cel­lor, Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les; West In­dies Vice-Cap­tain Deryck Mur­ray; Ja­maican busi­ness­man, OK Mel­ha­do and promi­nent Caribbean lawyer Charles Wilkin QC, all help­ing pen the re­port.

Sker­ritt said CWI was de­ter­mined to “do all we can to en­sure the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this re­port.”

(CMC)