VIN­ODE MAM­CHAN

The In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) has told the chair­man of the Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Sub-com­mit­tee on crick­et Dr. Ralph Gon­za­les that the gov­ern­ing body for the sport will not en­ter­tain any meet­ing with his group un­less the pres­i­dent of Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Dave Cameron is present.

Dr. Gon­za­les the Prime Min­is­ter of St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines has writ­ten to the ICC ask­ing for a meet­ing with the world crick­et body dur­ing the up­com­ing CHOGM in Eng­land in April 18-20.

A per­son close to the sit­u­a­tion who agreed to speak to Guardian Me­dia Sports on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said he got sight of the cor­re­spon­dence sent by the ICC to Dr. Gon­za­les and copied to the Prime Min­is­ters of Bar­ba­dos Fre­un­del Stu­art, Prime Min­is­ter of Ja­maica An­drew Hol­ness and Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go Dr. Kei­th Row­ley, and in it they clear­ly state that they (the ICC) will not meet with the Sub-com­mit­tee un­less Cameron is present.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive of ICC, Dave Richard­son re­spond­ing on be­half of the chair­man of the ICC Shashank Manohar stat­ed in the let­ter: "I re­fer to your let­ter dat­ed 14 March 2018 ad­dressed to the ICC Chair­man, Mr Manohar. He has re­quest­ed me to re­ply on his be­half. Mr. Manohar is amenable to a meet­ing with the PM­SC at a con­ve­nient date, but since Crick­et West In­dies is our Mem­ber, the firm view is that the meet­ing should not take place with­out the at­ten­dance/pres­ence of the Chair­man of the Crick­et West In­dies Board, Mr Cameron.

The Let­ter con­tin­ued: “The ICC of­fices are lo­cat­ed in Dubai and Mr. Manohar is based in Nag­pur, In­dia. Your pro­pos­al to meet in Lon­don dur­ing the course of your CHOGM from the 18-20 April 2018 will un­for­tu­nate­ly not be pos­si­ble, es­pe­cial­ly since we are hold­ing our quar­ter­ly Board and Com­mit­tee meet­ings in Kolkata from the 21-26 April. As you may be aware, the ICC is stag­ing an ICC Women’s World T20 in the Caribbean in No­vem­ber this year. In the ab­sence of an al­ter­na­tive, this may pro­vide a more con­ve­nient op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet.”

The source said that Cameron is a high­ly re­spect­ed mem­ber of the ICC and com­ing through Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) there's no way ICC will snub him to meet with the Sub-com­mit­tee since it is to dis­cuss West In­dies crick­et and to hold such a meet­ing with­out Cameron present will be un­fair and sug­gest he's be­ing un­der­mined.

Re­gion­al lead­ers are de­ter­mined to do every­thing pos­si­ble to re­vive West In­dies crick­et, and ways of achiev­ing this ob­jec­tive was on the agen­da at last months Twen­ty-Ninth In­ter-ses­sion­al Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of CARI­COM, in Haiti.