PART 3

In­tro­duc­tion

This ar­ti­cle has been prompt­ed by the re­cent dis­grace­ful per­for­mance of the West In­dies (“WI”) crick­et team on Mon­day Ju­ly 14, 2025 in to­talling a mere 27 in the sec­ond in­nings against Aus­tralia in Sabi­na Park, Ja­maica.

I have been an avid fan and sup­port­er of WI test crick­et for near­ly 70 years. Dur­ing that time, I have at­tend­ed mul­ti­ple test match­es both in the Caribbean and abroad, go­ing as far as South Africa in 1998 - 1999 to see part of the pa­thet­ic white­wash in Dur­ban and Capetown.

How­ev­er, over the past 15 to 20 years, with the con­tin­u­ing de­cline in our per­for­mances, an emo­tion­al di­vorce from WI crick­et was de­lib­er­ate­ly fos­tered so as to not be dis­ap­point­ed by the shod­dy per­for­mances of the team. The stage had been reached where one would laugh off those per­for­mances and not be both­ered to com­plain about them, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the past 10 years.

How­ev­er, what oc­curred on Mon­day Ju­ly 14, 2025 caused a deep sense of out­rage which made it im­per­a­tive that this ar­ti­cle should be writ­ten so that I could be at peace with my­self.

The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with WI crick­et is the present gov­er­nance struc­ture which has been crit­i­cised in four se­ri­ous re­ports for al­most 20 years.

Part I and II of this overview of the West In­dies crick­et were pub­lished on Au­gust 31, and Sep­tem­ber 7, 2025

In­ter-Ses­sion­al Meet­ing held in Be­lize, on 16-17 Feb­ru­ary 2016 and they ac­cept­ed its rec­om­men­da­tions.

I should let you know that the Heads of Gov­ern­ment have made it pel­lu­cid that in all this, their mo­tive is to mod­ernise the man­age­ment of the game and im­prove the gov­er­nance arrange­ments that cur­rent­ly ex­ist for what is large­ly con­sid­ered to be a pub­lic good, man­aged by a pri­vate com­pa­ny — and not the takeover of the game by Gov­ern­ments in the Re­gion.

In the cir­cum­stances, I am writ­ing to you on be­half of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com, in your ca­pac­i­ty as Chair­man of the

Gov­ern­ing Body of in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, to bring this cur­rent state of af­fairs to your at­ten­tion.

Through this, it is my hope that I can ini­ti­ate an ex­change of in­for­ma­tion and in­voke your ap­pre­ci­a­tion and un­der­stand­ing of the process of trans­for­ma­tion­al change of West In­dies crick­et be­ing pur­sued by the Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com.”

It was against the back­ground of that let­ter, that the un­der­signed was re­quest­ed by the rel­e­vant Head of Gov­ern­ment and the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at to pro­vide an Opin­ion deal­ing with the num­ber of le­gal is­sues sur­round­ing the pro­posed in­volve­ment of Cari­com in re­struc­tur­ing the gov­er­nance of WI crick­et.

That Opin­ion was done gratis for the love of WI crick­et. Af­ter ex­am­in­ing a num­ber of is­sues in­clud­ing the de­ci­sion of the In­di­an Supreme Court in the BC­CI case, the ICC guide­lines on gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion in crick­et and the de­vel­op­ments in oth­er Test play­ing coun­tries as to the gov­er­nance struc­tures, the Opin­ion end­ed by ad­vis­ing in sum­ma­ry as fol­lows:

“63. That there is no le­gal ba­sis up­on which the Heads of Gov­ern­ment can ef­fect the im­me­di­ate dis­so­lu­tion of the WICB with­out the agree­ment of the WICB. The rec­om­men­da­tion for im­me­di­ate dis­so­lu­tion of the WICB was made on the ba­sis that the WICB hav­ing agreed to the ap­point­ment of the re­view pan­el which led to the Bar­riteau Re­port would have ac­cept­ed the main rec­om­men­da­tion of that re­port that the WICB should im­me­di­ate­ly be dis­solved in a man­ner sim­i­lar to what hap­pened with the Aus­tralian Crick­et Board in Au­gust 2012.

64. That crick­et in the Caribbean can be treat­ed as a pub­lic good i.e. an ac­tiv­i­ty which en­joys and com­mands the in­ter­est and at­ten­tion of a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of the cit­i­zens of the Caribbean. The WICB as the body in charge of crick­et is per­form­ing a pub­lic func­tion in re­spect of which Gov­ern­men­tal in­ter­ven­tion is legal­ly jus­ti­fi­able.

That the Gov­ern­ments of the crick­et-play­ing coun­tries of the Caribbean are em­pow­ered as a mat­ter of law to takeover and con­trol West In­di­an crick­et. How­ev­er, there are neg­a­tive con­se­quences which would flow from such ac­tion in terms of ICC mem­ber­ship.

The Heads of Gov­ern­ment have ex­press­ly stat­ed that they have no de­sire to takeover, con­trol and reg­u­late the ad­min­is­tra­tion and op­er­a­tions of crick­et but mere­ly to un­der­take a lim­it­ed in­ter­ven­tion to spon­sor the mod­erni­sa­tion of its gov­er­nance struc­ture. Such in­ter­ven­tion would not be ob­jec­tion­able or in­con­sis­tent with the rules of the ICC in re­la­tion to such mat­ters.

67. In the present gov­er­nance struc­ture, West In­di­an crick­et is out­dat­ed and in­con­sis­tent with In­ter­na­tion­al Best Prac­tice be­cause it places ter­ri­to­r­i­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion above pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­tence among the in­di­vid­u­als to be ap­point­ed as di­rec­tors. By so do­ing, there is an in­sti­tu­tion­al con­flict of in­ter­est em­bed­ded in the gov­er­nance struc­ture which is to be re­gard­ed as legal­ly flawed.”

The afore­men­tioned Opin­ion was pre­sent­ed to the Cari­com Heads’ meet­ing in Guyana a cou­ple months lat­er, and re­li­able re­ports in­di­cat­ed that it was de­cid­ed to pro­ceed with the mod­erni­sa­tion of the struc­ture of WI crick­et. The ex­tent to which this was ac­com­plished is not clear.

How­ev­er, what is clear is that there were some mi­nor changes in the num­ber of in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tors, but the present struc­ture re­mained sub­stan­tial­ly un­al­tered, whilst the de­cline in WI crick­et con­tin­ues.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, it is the writer’s view that the fol­low­ing ques­tions arise for con­sid­er­a­tion and an­swer, not on­ly by the Cari­com Heads, but al­so CWI. They are set out here­un­der.

Hav­ing recog­nised and de­cid­ed over 9 years ago that the de­cline in WI crick­et should be ar­rest­ed by lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment to trans­form the out­dat­ed struc­ture, the ques­tions which arise are as fol­lows:

i. What steps have been tak­en over the past 9 years to ini­ti­ate that process?

ii. Has the pro­posed trans­for­ma­tion of the gov­ern­ment struc­ture been ef­fect­ed?

iii. If not, why not?

i. What steps have been tak­en to re­form the gov­er­nance struc­ture of CWI as rec­om­mend­ed by the Re­ports of the com­mit­tees known as the Pat­ter­son Re­port, the Wilkin Re­por, the Bar­riteau Re­port, and the We­h­by Re­port?

ii. What are the rea­sons for fail­ing to mod­ernise the present out­dat­ed struc­ture?

iii. Why have the WI crick­et leg­ends, who know about the game and played the game, not en­joyed sub­stan­tial rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the board of di­rec­tors?

The next ques­tion which aris­es is what are the like­ly con­se­quences if the fore­go­ing ques­tions are not ad­dressed and ac­tion tak­en to mod­ernise and deal with the present out­dat­ed struc­ture of WI crick­et. Those steps would need to be tak­en in ear­ly course be­cause every­thing in­di­cates that WI test crick­et is on the way out. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly so be­cause we now live in an en­vi­ron­ment where T20 crick­et has tak­en over, and the Caribbean Primer League (“CPL”) is wide­ly re­gard­ed as the biggest par­ty in sport. It dom­i­nates and dic­tates many things which take place in crick­et in this part of the world.

What is like­ly to hap­pen if no steps are tak­en to trans­form the gov­er­nance struc­ture hav­ing re­gard to the fore­go­ing, we must now all Dare to Face the Truth as the late Tony Co­zi­er would have said. The present re­al­i­ty sug­gests:

i. That test crick­et in the Caribbean is more than like­ly to pass away. We would not be the mor­ti­cians. In­stead, the ICC is quite like­ly to as­sist us in per­form­ing those rights.

ii. CPL, as the biggest par­ty in sport, could with­in the next decade or two sub­stan­tial­ly un­der­mine, if not ex­tin­guish, the proud his­to­ry of WI crick­et ef­fect­ed dur­ing the glo­ry days of 1976 to 1995 un­der the cap­tain­cies of Sir Clive Lloyd and Sir Vi­vian Richards. Caribbean peo­ple will no longer en­joy a sense of pride and in­ter­na­tion­al re­spect when they trav­el, and the ques­tion of crick­et is dis­cussed. In­stead, we are like­ly to be re­gard­ed as a bunch of jok­ers on­ly in­ter­est­ed in par­ty­ing.!