2017 million dollar question for WICB
Andre Baptise
Published: Guardian
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Courtney Browne, right, and Ian Bradshaw, celebrate after guiding West Indies to victory in the 2004 Champions Trophy final in England.
​The West Indies will miss the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Champions Trophy 2017. What a pity.
Who is to blame? That is the US$2 million question.
How can anyone explain why the West Indies Cricket Board (WIBC) did not plan a one-day series since the aborted Indian tour in 2014? Surely someone should have been monitoring the team’s position as it relates to qualification.
Over 12 months have elapsed and there is a strong feeling that the Board’s administrators, particularly those responsible for planning, were caught sleeping on the job.
We should not be surprised at this new blunder since there has been a series of mishaps at the WICB that would confuse the most flourishing mind. You would think that people in such a prestigious office would understand the systems and provisions of the ICC. But this is the West Indies Cricket Board!
The WICB, whose members are mostly myopic in their thinking, obviously felt that the tournament was so far away, that there was no need to think about it. So no one read the rules of the competition as it related to the eligibility of the teams participating.
Therefore, by the time the WICB realised that it was only the top eight ranked teams who were allowed to take part by a cut off date of September 30, West Indies cricket faced the humiliation of not playing in a major ICC tournament for the first time.
The vexing question remains. Who is to blame for this? It certainly is not the players since they do not schedule matches.
The fact is that it was only in June/July 2015 that the West Indies was overtaken by both Bangladesh and then Pakistan and pushed down to 9th place in the rankings. I understand even the organisers in England are annoyed with the WICB.
They know that given the high marketability of the West Indies team in the shorter versions of the game, with players such as Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Keiron Pollard and Andre Russell, the WICB has blundered badly.
Who is to blame?
It must start and stop with Dave Cameron, a man who should not be president of the WICB. How lucky can one be? This is a man who was in charge during the Indian fiasco but was re-elected by his peers.
Cameron should fire his technocrats like Richard Pybus, the overall director of coaching, who ought to have kept him abreast of the possibilities and permutations with regards the tournament.
How could such experienced people like Pybus and Clive Lloyd, lose sight of something so important?
This is a tournament which the West Indies won in 2004 under the leadership of Brian Lara and Augustine Logie (coach).
I am sure fans will recall the heroics of Ian Bradshaw and Courtney Browne (now one of the selectors) who shared a ninth wicket unbeaten 71-run partnership, that took the West Indies to an unlikely victory by two wickets.
No one is putting their hands up and admitting it was their fault. Instead, we are upset with Pakistan for pulling out of a series that can only do them more harm than good. Pybus and Lloyd, if indeed they are the culpable pair, need to be held accountable for this blatant lack of care.
If I was a West Indian player, I would seek damages against the Board for loss of earnings. It would be an interesting case, which might help to ensure this does not happen again. In most organisations, heads would have rolled.
Sadly no one expects that to happen at the WICB, which is probably why sponsors from Trinidad and Tobago flocked to the Caribbean Premier League rather than the West Indies Cricket Board events.
Some have told me that the Cricket Committee must shoulder the blame. If that is true, then so be it. But we must not allow the WICB to slip this under the door and move on.
We need accountability and we need to find out what went wrong and why. More importantly, we need to find a way to ensure it never happens again.
I have been told the WICB is working on getting the organisers to adjust the rules to allow the West Indies into the tournament.
That is another matter and would appear to be rather far-fetched, although in cricket’s current environment anything may be possible.
