ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Crick­et West In­dies have slashed staff and play­er in­comes in half, in an at­tempt to re­main vi­able amidst mount­ing fi­nan­cial trou­bles due to the glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

De­scrib­ing the move as a “tem­po­rary mea­sure”, the board said in a state­ment Fri­day that it “deeply re­gret­ted” hav­ing to make the cuts but was left with lit­tle choice “in the face of de­bil­i­tat­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges which have re­sult­ed from the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic”.

The mea­sures, adopt­ed fol­low­ing “close con­sul­ta­tion with all stake­hold­ers”, will al­so ex­tend to the fund­ing for ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards, ter­ri­to­r­i­al board fran­chis­es along with the play­ers as­so­ci­a­tion, WIPA.

Re­tain­ers and al­lowances for di­rec­tors and ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment are al­so be­ing slashed by half.

CWI ap­proved the mea­sures dur­ing a board of di­rec­tors meet­ing held by tele­con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, act­ing on rec­om­men­da­tions put for­ward by its Fi­nan­cial Strat­e­gy Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee es­tab­lished last month and chaired by Ja­maica Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Wil­ford “Bil­ly” Heav­en.

The board said it did not en­vis­age the mea­sures last­ing be­yond “three to six months”.

CWI pres­i­dent Ricky Sker­ritt said the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment had re­quired a “huge sac­ri­fice” from the en­tire West In­dies crick­et fra­ter­ni­ty.

“Crick­et is the beat­ing heart of our re­gion for many in­di­vid­u­als, com­mu­ni­ties, and economies,” said Sker­ritt, who re­cent­ly likened CWI’s fi­nances to a pa­tient in in­ten­sive care.

“This pan­dem­ic is hurt­ing every West In­di­an and this de­ci­sion to cut staff and play­er in­comes has been a very dif­fi­cult one to make; one that will im­pact so many mem­bers of the crick­et­ing fam­i­ly around the Caribbean.

“This busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan un­for­tu­nate­ly re­quires all stake­hold­ers to make a huge sac­ri­fice, but I am con­fi­dent that it won’t be long be­fore CWI will be in a po­si­tion to en­sure that the sport we love can restart and be en­joyed once again by the thou­sands of crick­et fans across the re­gion and di­as­po­ra.”

CWI’s fi­nances had been ail­ing for a while, a sit­u­a­tion re­peat­ed­ly high­light­ed by Sker­ritt since com­ing to of­fice last year April. The board’s in­ter­na­tion­al broad­cast­ing deal, a ma­jor source of its rev­enue, ex­pired last De­cem­ber and a new one is yet to be ne­go­ti­at­ed.

With the out­break of COVID-19 forc­ing a halt to crick­et glob­al­ly, CWI face the prospect of hav­ing to post­pone home tours by South Africa and New Zealand, both of which were ex­pect­ed to be a boon to the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s fi­nances.

Hav­ing kept staff, play­ers, coach­es and oth­er of­fi­cials on full pay since the start of the pan­dem­ic, chief ex­ec­u­tive John­ny Grave said the “tem­po­rary re­duc­tion” in pay was a means of help­ing to nav­i­gate the cur­rent cri­sis.

“The ef­fects of this pan­dem­ic have been dis­tress­ing for every­one – the worst cri­sis of our life­time – and at present, we can­not be cer­tain when the sit­u­a­tion will be rec­ti­fied,” Grave point­ed out.

“We rec­og­nize that this will cause fi­nan­cial pain for all our staff, play­ers, coach­es and um­pires across the Caribbean, but hav­ing kept every­one on full-pay since the out­break in March we have no choice but to take de­ci­sive ac­tion from next month on­wards.

“CWI’s great­est as­set is our peo­ple and play­ers and every­one shar­ing equal­ly in the tem­po­rary re­duc­tion, we be­lieve is the best way for us to en­sure we get through this cri­sis and pro­tect our or­gan­i­sa­tion and all the jobs in the sys­tem.

“We will be re­view­ing the sit­u­a­tion reg­u­lar­ly with the hope that we can re­turn to nor­mal op­er­a­tions at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

CMC