BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Crick­et West In­dies chief ex­ec­u­tive, John­ny Grave, says last Sun­day’s con­tentious events which forced the post­pone­ment of the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM), has threat­ened to de­rail much of the sig­nif­i­cant progress made in re­pair­ing the West In­dies crick­et brand in re­cent years.

In the wake of the fi­as­co, Grave said CWI had been forced to reach out to the gov­ern­ing body’s com­mer­cial part­ners and oth­er stake­hold­ers to re­as­sure them about the sta­bil­i­ty of West In­dies crick­et.

And the Eng­lish­man stressed it was crit­i­cal the post­poned AGM sched­uled for April 11 came off as planned so as to pre­vent any fur­ther fall­out and dam­age to the West In­dies crick­et brand.

“I think very clear­ly the rep­u­ta­tion of this or­gan­i­sa­tion in the eyes of the world is mas­sive­ly im­por­tant to the brand of West In­dies crick­et,” Grave said.

“And I think we’ve made enor­mous progress over the last few years to re­pair that brand, not just glob­al­ly but with­in the re­gion – to fans in the way that we’ve not re­al­ly had any shocks and news on the field and cer­tain­ly less so off it of late.

“But the re­cent events have def­i­nite­ly dam­aged the brand and I and the rest of the ex­ec­u­tive have spent … hours speak­ing to spon­sors, broad­cast­ers and re-as­sur­ing our stake­hold­ers that the AGM will go for­ward on the 11th and we re­al­ly hope it does be­cause all of this af­fects us.”

He added: “In this case, it is ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ing from where I sit be­cause I think as the chief ex­ec­u­tive of Crick­et West In­dies, our ac­counts have nev­er been in a bet­ter state.”

The Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion and the Guyana Crick­et Board both snubbed last Sun­day’s vir­tu­al meet­ing, leav­ing the meet­ing short of a nine-mem­ber quo­rum and forc­ing its post­pone­ment.

More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the post­pone­ment stalled the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions which were ex­pect­ed to pit the GCB’s Anand Sanasie against in­cum­bent pres­i­dent Ricky Sker­ritt and the BCA’s Calvin Hope against CWI vice-pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low.

Both Sanasie and Hope sub­se­quent­ly an­nounced they were drop­ping their bid for the CWI lead­er­ship.

The BCA and GCB con­tend­ed that CWI had not pro­vid­ed the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments the stip­u­lat­ed 14 days in ad­vance, there­fore not giv­ing them enough time to pe­ruse them and thus caus­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to skip the AGM.

But Grave said ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards had been sent the au­dit­ed state­ments 14 days be­fore the AGM as re­quired. The con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, how­ev­er, which were on­ly re­quired be­cause of the re­cent ac­qui­si­tion of Coolidge Crick­et Ground, had been is­sued to share­hold­ers on March 26.

Grave al­so stressed that the con­sol­i­dat­ed state­ments had al­so been a late re­quest from the au­di­tors.

“This is the first time in our his­to­ry we’ve had con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments and that’s be­cause we now own Coolidge Crick­et Ground Inc, a sub­sidiary com­pa­ny,” Grave told Star­com Ra­dio’s Ma­son and Guest crick­et show.

“Oth­er than the rental in­come from the An­tigua Ath­let­ics Club and some car park rent, all the costs of run­ning that crick­et ground are al­ready in the CWI ac­counts, so the sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ence be­tween our fi­nan­cial state­ments and those con­sol­i­dat­ed with CCB are ex­treme­ly mi­nor.

“That’s why the Au­dit, Risk and Com­pli­ance Com­mit­tee and the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ap­proved the au­dit­ed state­ments on Tues­day, March 9, that’s why the Board of Di­rec­tors ap­proved them on March 11 sub­ject to those con­sol­i­dat­ed au­dit­ed state­ments.”

Grave said with the two-week post­pone­ment of the AGM, he hoped it would now pro­vide enough time for the BCA and GCB to look over the con­sol­i­dat­ed state­ments, so a quo­rum could be had and the meet­ing pro­ceed as sched­uled.

“Why share­hold­ers would take any ac­tion that dam­ages the brand of their com­pa­ny and dam­ages that rep­u­ta­tion is un­fath­omable to me … but I con­tin­ue to be sur­prised and shocked by some of the ac­tions,” Grave point­ed out.

“I very much hope, maybe naive­ly, that the 11th will hap­pen. Bar­ba­dos said clear­ly that they want­ed longer to look at the con­sol­i­dat­ed state­ments so they now would’ve had four weeks to look at the CWI ac­counts and two fur­ther weeks to look at the CCG ac­counts.

“I would like to think that on that ba­sis the BCA would at­tend.”

CMC