The top­ic for to­day’s Things That Mat­ter col­umn is the Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) T20 con­tract with the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL). A con­tract that al­leged­ly gives CPL a near to­tal stran­gle­hold on the lu­cra­tive T20 crick­et for­mat here in the Caribbean. 

Giv­en that T20 crick­et is on the 2028 Los An­ge­les Olympic Games pro­gram. And I might add most like­ly to be on the Bris­bane 2032 Olympic pro­gram. It begs the ques­tion: who will have con­trol of the T20 Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion process in the Caribbean?

By now every­one in­volved in crick­et will know rep­re­sen­ta­tion is by coun­try via the Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (NNOCs). It is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that CANOC (the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees) ful­ly sup­port­ed the ICC’s ef­forts to gain the in­clu­sion of T-20 crick­et on the Olympic pro­gram.

I, for one, will ac­knowl­edge that dur­ing my tenure as CANOC and TTOC pres­i­dent, I ful­ly sup­port­ed the no­tion of T20 on the Olympic pro­gram. As a side note, ru­mour had it that the rea­son it took longer than an­tic­i­pat­ed for Olympic T20 crick­et to be a re­al­i­ty was due to an ini­tial re­luc­tance of the all-pow­er­ful BC­CI to sup­port the ef­fort. How T20 even­tu­al­ly got the IOC bless­ing is a sto­ry that must one day be told. But back to the point that dur­ing my tenure as pres­i­dent I didn’t raise con­cerns pub­licly about the mul­ti-year CPL/CWI con­tract. I did have many con­ver­sa­tions with in­di­vid­u­als who had more in­for­ma­tion than I about the pur­port­ed terms of the con­tract. One as­pect I nev­er un­der­stood was how CWI could agree to a decades-long con­tract. It didn’t re­quire a crys­tal ball or Norstradamus to per­ceive—even at that time—that T20 would be a mon­ey play that would dis­rupt and trans­form the staid, tra­di­tion­al colo­nial moor­ings of crick­et.

There is the need for clar­i­ty from CWI about the process that will be used for T20 Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion in the Caribbean. CWI and its mem­ber coun­try crick­et boards must have con­trol of the Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion path­way for the Caribbean. T20 crick­et and the qual­i­fi­ca­tion process must ac­cord with IOC rules and guide­lines.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty pro­vid­ed for the Caribbean to medal in T20 crick­et at the Los An­ge­les Olympics must not be sab­o­taged. This is not to sug­gest that CPL, from a sports en­ter­tain­ment busi­ness per­spec­tive, has not cre­at­ed a prod­uct that has at­tract­ed large crowds and a younger one at that. For all the pos­i­tives that CPL—as some will ar­gue—has giv­en to the re­gion. The re­al ques­tion is, at what cost?

CWI needs to come clean. While it can be ar­gued that CPL and CWI are not in the Olympic busi­ness. It’s plain as day­light for the world to see that the Olympics mat­ter to the peo­ple of the Caribbean. Just as FI­JI did when rug­by 7s were added to the Olympic pro­gram. FI­JI won the rug­by 7s Olympic gold medal on two oc­ca­sions.

It’s not un­re­al­is­tic for a CANOC mem­ber coun­try to win T20 crick­et gold in Los An­ge­les and Bris­bane. But the plain truth of the mat­ter is that the plan­ning to achieve that goal/gold must start now. Not to­mor­row, next month, or next year. But right now.

It is in that con­text that CWI must come clean about who owns T20 crick­et in the Caribbean and what the Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion process is to de­ter­mine which Caribbean na­tion will be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be se­lect­ed by their NOC for Los An­ge­les 2028.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.