(SPORTSMAXPrime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines and Chairman of the CARICOM subcommittee on cricket, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, is clearing the air on some misconceptions surrounding the latter organisation’s entreaty for a meeting with the International Cricket Council (ICC).
According to Gonsalves, CARICOM had approached the ICC in a bid to ensure there was an understanding about what the heads of government were trying to achieve with its intervention in West Indies cricket.
“All that we are doing with the ICC with respect to their position as the international body responsible for the superintendence of world cricket is to indicate to them broadly what our position is,” said Gonsalves in an interview with SportsMax.tv.
“We (CARICOM) are moving to set up a legislative framework for the governance of West Indies cricket, this public good which has been run by a private entity, with an insufficient responsiveness and responsibility to the people – that’s what it is in a nutshell.
The 2015 Barriteau report, had as one of its suggestions, the abandonment of the West Indies Cricket Board, now called Cricket West Indies. The willingness of CARICOM to follow through with the report led to the suggestion that the organisation wants to take the reigns of West Indies cricket.
Gonsalves points out that this is also a misconception.
“The governments are not interested and won’t be involved, in ‘running West Indies cricket’- that is for the relevant stakeholders in our region.”
While saying the Heads of Government do not intend to take over West Indies cricket, Gonsalves continues to champion the idea that Cricket West Indies, as a private entity, cannot continue to operate in the way it has.
“The current (CWI) situation really allows for one man or a small group of people to administer this game in a manner that has a lot of irrationality about it and the mode of management, the governance, has created a lot of dissonance and distraction,” he said.
“When you have that level of dissonance and distraction, they (CWI) can become a limiting force and they can metamorphose quite easily into anti-developmental attitudes; and I think that was is happening currently,” Gonsalves explained.
The prime minister has while pointing to the inadequacies of the CWI, pointed out that he is not pointing fingers at any particular person within the organisation.
Gonsalves also wants to make it clear that, unlike popularly banded about, CARICOM is not targeting the head of Cricket West Indies, Dave Cameron, but rather the system of governance the organisation fosters.
“Notice I’m not talking about any individual person. An individual person in such a board structure depending on how they carry themselves will either make worse or ameliorate the governance arrangements which are inadequate,” he said.
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