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GUYANA CHRONICLE Wednesday April 6, 2016
More reason, less emotion needed to drive WICB reform By Imran Khan AFTER the team’s ICC World T20 2016 win in Kolkata, Darren Sammy, the West Indies captain, delivered as bruising a postmatch interview as has been witnessed in any global cricket final since the advent of live television. Visibly emotional, the veteran captain let his views on the not-so-behind-thescenes issues stalking West Indies cricket finally come to the fore. Sammy was deliberate in his language and specific on the issues he discussed. He spoke of the team’s disappointment in the West Indies Cricket Board and how the players felt disrespected. He thanked the board’s contemporary arch-nemesis, the CARICOM Heads of Government, for their support, naming Grenada’s Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell, who is leading CARICOM’s interest in modernising West Indies cricket governance. His blistering comments underscore how toxic the relationship between players and the board is. “We had a lot of issues. We felt disrespected by our board. I want to thank the heads of CARICOM. Throughout this tournament they have been supporting the team, we’ve got emails, we’ve got phone calls. Prime Minister Mitchell sent a very inspiring email for the team this morning and I’m yet to hear from our own board. That is very disappointing.” Cricket fans around the world might have found it astonishing to hear a captain lay in to his own board at a moment of historic triumph. Followers of West Indies cricket were, in fact, anticipating it. West Indies cricket is a house divided. The palpable toxicity has its genesis in a governance system that was described as “antiquated, obsolete and anachronistic” in the report of the CARICOM Prime Ministerial Committee on the Governance of West Indies Cricket, headed by Eudine Barriteau and which was constituted following the infamous India tour debacle. This governance struc-
West Indies T20 captain Darren Sammy ture, embraced by the current and previous iterations of WICB, is at the centre of the players’ discontent. They, and CARICOM, believe how the hierarchy of West Indies cricket is arrived at is what most empowers the board of directors to effectively lord over them and West Indies cricket. The players feel what they describe as a deep sense of disrespect, a lack of support from a board which they and the public and CARICOM see as not being accountable to anyone. And until the advent of international Twenty20 leagues, the players felt entrapped by this arrangement. Regrettably, while there is broad consensus that the WICB’s governance structure and systems need modernising, even by the board of directors itself, the discourse has suffered from being focused on personalities and has been laced with emotive vitriol. On all sides – board, players (current and former), administrators and the West Indian public at large. Where there ought to be reason, good sense, good faith, negotiation, frank and respectful engagement and discussion, the irresistible temptation has been, consumed by distrust, to issue virulent press releases, pen accusatory articles, and address and throw shade at each other via the mass
media and on social media rather than across the table. Also in the mix is an unhelpful but generous serving of ego and intransigence, again on all sides. Most recently though, the ego and intransigence, compounded by a cavalier and infantile attitude, have been ballooning on the side that ought to have been providing leadership. There are those, well informed, who are of the not unreasonable conviction that had the WICB provided leadership rather than go AWOL, the Indian tour debacle would have been avoided. Nonetheless, none is without sin. Until the conversation is shifted away from personalities and fuelled less by emotion, the discord will persist. CARICOM presumably belatedly concluded that what West Indies cricket required is an intervention. Successive prime ministers have attempted to initiate reform with an impassioned zealousness that has offended the WICB hierarchy, which feels threatened by what it perceives to be an attempt to corral its influence. The old turkey and Thanksgiving dilemma. There are legal complications as well to CARICOM’s intrusion. As a regional body comprising substantively of the countries that form the core of those governed
Former WICB president Sir Julian Hunte by the WICB, the Heads of Government are hard-pressed to avoid the regional board’s challenges in administering the sport without rancour and acrimony being constant and unshakeable themes. It is the essence of why the CARICOM subcommittee on cricket is thought to be necessary. The first headed by PJ Patterson, the former Jamaican prime minister, and the second chaired by Charles Wilkin QC, eminent Kittitian attorney. While a considerable number of the recommendations in these two reports were implemented by the WICB, the transformational ones have not and the resistance to meaningful governance reform remains robust. What is not widely known and indeed may surprise many is that there are directors of the WICB who are in favour of governance reform, and not mere superficial reform but radical reform. Unsurprisingly however, they are in the minority. WICB did demonstrate some degree of good faith when it opted to include four independent directors to sit alongside the 12 from the six territorial boards. But with territorial directors dominating the board, the jockeying for power, privilege, hosting of international matches, regional matches
and tournaments, and funding, cripples meaningful and sustained progress. Development is stymied in favour of political platitudes. Recall that WICB presidential elections are every two years. Got to keep the electorate (two votes for each of the six territorial boards) happy. Often denounced as an old boys’ club, the WICB, to its credit, did, albeit subject to mounting public pressure, commission at least two high profile committees to examine its governance structure. While a considerable number of the recommendations in these two reports were implemented by the WICB, the transformational ones have not and the resistance to meaningful governance reform remains robust. It is this contaminated governance system, rooted in an electoral system of votes-for-rewards, which requires dismantling and reorganising. It is a system that is fraught with pitfalls and which lends itself to horse-trading on everything from where matches are played, to where (and how often) meetings are held, to what players and personnel are selected and what players and personnel are not. However, the approach essayed by CARICOM has been interpreted as belligerent by the WICB. The response was to lawyer
up and circle the wagons. Perhaps a softer, silken approach might lend to practical results. It must start with the recognition that the territorial boards are the shareholders of the WICB and must play a central role in any governance reconfiguration. Where the discussion can be usefully focused is on finding a middle ground that allows the territorial boards clout without domination. It is the domination of the WICB by the territorial boards (several that themselves are in need of reform) that results in chronic shortcomings in the governance and administration of the regional game. It is the fear of the wholesale discarding of the territorial board that paralyses the WICB directors from advancing. One pertinent untold story of West Indies cricket is that the former president, Sir Julian Hunte, contesting for a fourth term in 2013, lost to the current president, Dave Cameron, ostensibly because Hunte was intent on leading governance reform similar to what was had by Cricket Australia. He had already initiated the steps by commissioning the Wilkin Report and had been quietly organising to restructure the governance of the game. It was a route the territorial boards were unprepared to go down and opted instead to install Hunte’s then vice-president to the top post. That has kept the incumbent afloat. Resistance to governance reform is his raison d’etre, on the authority of those to whom he is beholden: the territorial boards. For as long as this status quo holds, CARICOM’s Heads of Government will continue to encounter defiance. And Sammy’s and his successors’ inevitable disappointment will live on. (Reprinted from Wisden India) (Imran Khan is a former WICB Marketing and Communications manager and is now the Press Secretary to the Prime Minister and Director of Public Information in his native Guyana)