BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Chief ex­ec­u­tive John­ny Grave has de­fend­ed Crick­et West In­dies’ treat­ment of ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards, con­tend­ing the gov­ern­ing body had been “eq­ui­table” in its al­lo­ca­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al fix­tures and fi­nan­cial re­sources.

Not­ing CWI was al­ways cog­nisant about ac­cu­sa­tions of par­tial­i­ty to­wards cer­tain ter­ri­to­ries, Grave said it was the board’s stat­ed phi­los­o­phy by way of pol­i­cy, to en­sure in­su­lar­i­ty was re­moved from the re­gion­al game.

“It’s a phi­los­o­phy that we try to have, that’s why we took the view, cer­tain­ly pre-COVID, to en­sure that every in­ter­na­tion­al ground or every ter­ri­to­ry that had in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et would have at least had a Test match or two white-ball games, and we would spread our crick­et around the re­gion try­ing to take any ac­cu­sa­tion of pol­i­tics out of how we play crick­et,” the Eng­lish­man ex­plained.

“I think we, cer­tain­ly on an eq­ui­table ba­sis, fund all the fran­chis­es and fund all the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards so there’s no favour shown or dis­crep­an­cies be­tween how we now al­lo­cate crick­et or fund the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards so I think in that re­spect, I think we’re do­ing as much as we can do.”

Grave gave the as­sur­ance af­ter the Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion and the Guyana Crick­et Board snubbed last Sun­day’s An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, re­sult­ing in a lack of a quo­rum and forc­ing a post­pone­ment un­til April 11.

Both boards sub­se­quent­ly in­di­cat­ed their dis­com­fort with re­ceiv­ing au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments 48 hours be­fore the AGM.

The oth­er four share­hold­er boards – the Ja­maica Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board, the Lee­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board and the Wind­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board – had been present for the vir­tu­al meet­ing.

Not for the first time, the con­tro­ver­sy thrust the po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions in West In­dies crick­et in­to the head­lines and sparked heat­ed dis­cus­sion over the re­la­tion­ship be­tween CWI and ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards.

Grave said it was vi­tal­ly im­por­tant that fans, share­hold­ers and stake­hold­ers across the re­gion un­der­stood that CWI al­ways act­ed in the best in­ter­est of the game, and nev­er in an un­favourable way to­wards any mem­ber.

“Clear­ly there will al­ways be fans or peo­ple with­in cer­tain ter­ri­to­ries that think that their play­er should be picked over an­oth­er play­er and that’s part of the ex­cite­ment of crick­et and the de­bate of crick­et and the nar­ra­tive of any sport,” he point­ed out.

“We want that de­bate and we wel­come that de­bate but cer­tain­ly the phi­los­o­phy here is to share crick­et out equal­ly and eq­ui­tably and sim­i­lar­ly fund all boards.

“Very lim­it­ed amount of our fund­ing is per­for­mance-re­lat­ed, so re­lat­ed to maybe the IPL-re­lease fees if you’re a ter­ri­to­ry that’s pro­duc­ing more crick­eters, maybe through West In­dies pro­duc­tion fees if you’re pro­duc­ing more play­ers to the West In­dies team, there might be a small amount of ad­di­tion­al fund­ing but in the main, it’s very eq­ui­table fund­ing.”

Grave said in or­der for West In­dies crick­et to suc­ceed, there need­ed to be pro­duc­tive syn­er­gy be­tween CWI and all ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards.

“What you want is the game to be led by your gov­ern­ing body in the high­est pos­si­ble stan­dards,” he stressed.

“You want fund­ing to flow. Ul­ti­mate­ly in the eyes of your mem­bers and in a sense your own share­hold­ers, it’s about [CWI and the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards] win­ning.”

(CMC)