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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Caricom leaders stand up to CPL

by

ANDRE E. BAPTISTE
445 days ago
20240501

When the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go Dr. Kei­th Row­ley raised the “Clar­i­on call" for a dis­cus­sion on the ex­ist­ing Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) con­tract which was re-con­firmed by the Pres­i­dent of Crick­et West In­dies, Dr Kishore Shal­low as 50 years, there was a re­fresh­ing air of ex­pec­ta­tion that sur­round­ed the Two-day Cari­com Crick­et Con­fer­ence which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, T&T last week.

The lu­cra­tive (CPL), which be­gan 11 years ago, has come un­der the mi­cro­scope at the Cari­com con­fer­ence with gov­ern­ment lead­ers urg­ing the par­ties to rene­go­ti­ate the con­tract for the Twen­ty20 tour­na­ment.

For far too long, there has been the be­lief that this con­tract which I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to view many years ago dur­ing the Dr Ernest Hi­laire /Dr Ju­lian Hunte pe­ri­od as Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer and Pres­i­dent.

Pe­te Rus­sell the cur­rent CEO of CPL talked the par­tic­i­pants through his notes of how much CPL has in­curred, how much they have lost, and how much it has giv­en CWI over the last 12 years, which was a to­tal of around $17 mil­lion which works out to be just over $1.4 mil­lion US. That if the on­ly funds re­ceived by CWI as a fee are ridicu­lous­ly low, but if you be­lieve Rus­sell very good in the cir­cum­stances where CPL con­tin­ues to make loss­es. We were told by Mr Rus­sel that over $25 mil­lion US has to be in­curred each year just to stage the CPL.

Rus­sell to his cred­it rat­tled off fig­ures and amounts which we could not ob­serve on any screen but rather in­stead have to trust him on his word. The fact that Rus­sel did not list the full de­tails but ad­mit­ted that CWI had ac­cess to the fi­nan­cial state­ments of his com­pa­ny while ad­mit­ting that CWI had a 5% stake in CPL and Dig­i­cel

Al­so has a stake. we are still in­ter­est­ed but do not know who owns CPL. What baf­fles me on this, is the fact we were told that Dig­i­cel has some in­ter­est in the shares of CPL, the CPL in his cur­rent for­mat is not a sub­sidiary of Dig­i­cel, and there­fore the Ac­counts are not list­ed. I could be wrong but there ap­pears to be a school of thought that Mr Rus­sell on­ly ap­pears to want to an­swer just enough.

In­ter­est­ing­ly the 50 years was re­vealed just over 10 days ago on a Thurs­day I sports ra­dio show with many up­sets and ques­tion­ing who would sign away our birthright.

Rus­sel sug­gest­ed that the CPL would be will­ing to hold dis­cus­sions on the mat­ter of 50 years and men­tioned that there are thir­ty-year-old cri­te­ria for re­view­ing and chang­ing from 30 to 50 years. Rus­sell, please share the ac­counts in de­tail so that many of us can re­view and com­ment.

The cyn­i­cism that cur­rent­ly makes CPL one of the most ques­tioned op­er­a­tions leaves a lot to be de­sired Dr Row­ley's po­si­tion­ing on CPL was ably sup­port­ed by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley who said that it could be in­ter­pret­ed that such an un­healthy con­tract pe­ri­od of 50 years could be in­ter­pret­ed in the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment as a - “Re­straint of Trade “, which would mean that the con­tract could be ques­tioned in the court of law.

There is a sense that over the two days, we mere­ly touched the sur­face of the prob­lem but sig­nif­i­cant­ly it was a touch of care and con­cern and not of dis­gust and dis­trust. There is a lot of work that needs to be com­plet­ed, not least changes to the regime that runs our crick­et whether by num­bers or by per­sons, or by both. The CPL con­tract it was sug­gest­ed was not the on­ly one that was not to the ad­van­tage of CPL but rather it was one of many that some­how was ne­go­ti­at­ed in favour of oth­ers at the ex­pense of West In­dies crick­et.

The leg­endary crick­eters present both live at the Hy­att or vir­tu­al­ly, each left an in­deli­ble opin­ion of an ap­pre­cia­tive au­di­ence, and none more so than a teary eye and com­mit­ted Michael Hold­ing, It must have tak­en a lot for the Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al team from Cari­com to en­sure their sup­port for West In­dies crick­et giv­en the ar­ro­gant and abu­sive be­hav­iour ex­pe­ri­enced in the past from CWI.

Per­haps it is an ac­knowl­edg­ment that the on­ly bas­tion of uni­ty left in this re­gion “to unite our peo­ple “is sport and let us start with crick­et, but every­one present would have left the two-day sem­i­nar cer­tain that Prime Min­is­ters Row­ley, Mot­t­ley, and Pres­i­dent Ali of Guyana along with For­mer Grena­da Prime Min­is­ter, Dr. Kei­th Mitchell, love and care for crick­et, be­yond the bound­ary. There­fore, alert­ing Dr Shal­low and his team that they will not eas­i­ly be able to just “brush aside”, their sug­ges­tions and find­ings.

As we spoke about the need for in­vest­ing in youth pro­grammes, it was good to know that the cur­rent Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mrs. Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis's pro­gramme of – I choose Sports – will have an ever-last­ing ef­fect on all sports in­clud­ing crick­et, giv­en the pro­fes­sion­als now in­volved.

It is cer­tain, that we need more such meet­ings, this time we can in­volve more cur­rent young crick­eters, both male and fe­male so that their voic­es can be added to those that want the best for crick­et.

The good news is that West In­dies coach Dar­ren Sam­my ap­pears to be con­fi­dent of vic­to­ry go­ing for­ward in the World t20 Fi­nals from June 1st to 29th.

The Part­ing view and ad­vice has to be for Pe­te Rus­sell, that “see­ing is be­liev­ing “, so more needs to be made most open to a lot more than a few.

And again, we must thank Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley and his Cari­com sub­com­mit­tee as well as Dr Shal­low, Miles Bas­combe, and John­ny Grave in par­tic­u­lar for be­ing man enough to face the tough ques­tions and any ex­po­sure.


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