Socrates quote: “It is bet­ter to make a mis­take with full force of your be­ing than to care­ful­ly avoid mis­takes with a trem­bling spir­it.”

As Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) gets it­self ready to host the pres­ti­gious In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) 2024 T20 World Cup (June 1-29) in the re­gion in con­junc­tion with USA Crick­et, there ap­pears to be a grow­ing con­cern from ICC that CWI will not be able to han­dle their af­fairs with­out their sup­port (or in­ter­fer­ence de­pend­ing on who you ask).

The ICC has al­ready start­ed to make their pres­ence known if not ap­pre­ci­at­ed by send­ing out foot sol­diers (yes, they ap­pear to be giv­ing or­ders) to en­sure the ICC dic­tate is car­ried out.

Lis­ten­ing to these of­fi­cials while watch­ing the timid and sub­servient faces of those from the re­gion sug­gests that our West In­di­an team are mere­ly go­ing to be fol­low­ers, whether it is Bar­ba­dos, Guyana or Trinidad and To­ba­go. Per­haps that may ex­plain Ja­maica’s re­luc­tance to be in­volved in this ICC Ex­er­cise called the T20 World Cup, as I doubt that the Ja­maicans would ac­cept any­thing with­out some ques­tions and right­ful­ly so.

Alas, here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we have to be care­ful that our track record is not our worst en­e­my as borne out by the most re­cent stag­ing of the 2024 Di­manche Gras show on Feb­ru­ary 11. This show which start­ed af­ter 7 pm fin­ished close to 2 am on Feb­ru­ary 12, which was ab­solute­ly atro­cious and sug­gests if not in­ten­tion­al, a to­tal ne­glect of prop­er time man­age­ment. Imag­ine 12 Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans each singing one song and there were about 20 or more Kings and Queens' por­tray­als. This was just mind-bog­gling how the show dragged and dragged and dragged on for so long but I was told: “They like it so".

How­ev­er, I am still un­cer­tain, even now as to who the “they" refers to. Is it the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tions (TU­CO), Car­ni­val Band Lead­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, Kings, Queens, pub­lic in at­ten­dance, view­ing au­di­ence on tele­vi­sion, or tourists? So all of the above or just some?

I has­ten to say that, most of the peo­ple who start­ed watch­ing the show would have left and gone to Net­flix, Su­per Bowl or to sleep halfway through.

But we can as­sure ICC that none of those in­volved in the Di­manche Gras will be con­sid­ered for any ICC event dur­ing the World Cup T20. Even the CWI would be more sen­si­ble than that.

At this point, I can on­ly hope that CWI stands up for it­self and en­sures that its point of view and that of the Caribbean is giv­en pri­or­i­ty and em­pha­sis. This is our event and we as the re­gion need to en­sure that we have more than enough of a say, so as to de­mand the Caribbean is ful­ly rep­re­sent­ed.

For in­stance, we need to have more promi­nent re­gion­al per­sons hav­ing a ma­jor role in de­ci­sion-mak­ing. We have to hope that both the pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low and the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer John­ny Grave are not just voice­less faces but rather men of char­ac­ter and utilise as much as pos­si­ble, our re­gion­al tal­ent. We all un­der­stand the im­por­tance of these World events are a means of push­ing the tourism en­ve­lope and that must not be sold short.

There have al­so been ini­tial com­plaints by some in the Caribbean about the avail­abil­i­ty of tick­et­ing pack­ages for the World Cup. There is a be­lief that the re­gion has been placed at a dis­ad­van­tage in the first round of tick­et bal­lot­ing. Many in the re­gion, have stat­ed from the mo­ment, the tick­ets were made avail­able, it was not pos­si­ble to gain ac­cess be­fore all the tick­ets were sold out, rais­ing ques­tions about the process and the le­git­i­ma­cy of the sales al­lo­ca­tion.

We al­so have to ex­am­ine, how the bid­ding process for sev­er­al of the op­er­a­tions in­volved in the Crick­et World Cup 2024, will be rolled out and the en­tire ques­tion of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty has to be ad­hered to.

One way for CWI to pro­tect it­self is through the us­age of En­vi­ron­ment, So­cial and Gov­er­nance (ESG), which is a frame­work used to as­sess an or­gan­i­sa­tion’s busi­ness prac­tices and per­for­mance on dif­fer­ent eth­i­cal and sus­tain­abil­i­ty is­sues.

CWI will al­so be able to mea­sure busi­ness risks and op­por­tu­ni­ties in those ar­eas. Whether the ICC would be in favour of this is a mat­ter that could be of con­cern, but CWI must stand tall and make some per­ti­nent de­mands in this re­gard.

There is a lot at risk for this World Cup, not on­ly a ques­tion of how the West In­dies T20 team per­forms on the record but al­so how CWI per­form its du­ties, through the var­i­ous ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards. An ex­am­ple would be in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Crick­et Board, ap­par­ent­ly will work with the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT), but whether SporTT has the rel­e­vant skills for such a task, will have to be prop­er­ly mon­i­tored.

Over the next few months, CWI will be test­ed on all fronts and Dr Shal­low will have huge boots to fill af­ter the suc­cess of the Ken­neth Gor­don-led West In­dies crick­et hi­er­ar­chy when the 2007 Crick­et World Cup was staged for the first time sole­ly in the re­gion, let us hope that the en­tire Caribbean comes to­geth­er as a group to work to­geth­er and for these few months en­sure that every­one is com­mit­ted to pro­duce a top-qual­i­ty World Cup.

I say to CWI, set the ex­am­ple, set a stan­dard so that the re­gion can be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and let ICC know that the CWI will not be left back or left in the wilder­ness dur­ing this World Cup, as we must be giv­en a func­tion­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to suc­ceed as a rich in his­to­ry and proud Caribbean men and women of crick­et.