Vin­ode Mam­chan

The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) will not be sup­port­ing a draft pro­pos­al that would give pow­er in in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et to In­dia, Eng­land and Aus­tralia. The In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) is propos­ing a two-tier sys­tem which will di­vide Test play­ing na­tions, with the West In­dies be­cause of their cur­rent rank­ings, qual­i­fy­ing for the low­er di­vi­sion.

De­ci­sion was reached dur­ing a two-day emer­gency meet­ing by tele­con­fer­ence which end­ed late Wednes­day night. A WICB spokesper­son said yes­ter­day that the WICB po­si­tion would not be made pub­lic un­til it is ar­tic­u­lat­ed be­fore the quar­ter­ly meet­ing of the (ICC) in Dubai on Jan­u­ary 28 and 29.

Ac­cord­ing to the spokesper­son: "The Board has tak­en a po­si­tion in the best in­ter­est of West In­dies Crick­et and which pres­i­dent Dave Cameron will present to the ICC Board meet­ing next week in Dubai."

He went on to say that: "The WICB views it as pru­dent to present the Board's po­si­tion to the ICC meet­ing be­fore mak­ing any fur­ther pub­lic com­ment."

How­ev­er, T&T Guardian un­der­stands that the di­rec­tors, af­ter study­ing the pro­pos­al, in its en­ti­ty was against sup­port­ing it as it could do se­ri­ous dam­age to the game in the re­gion.

It is un­der­stood that while the WICB di­rec­tors were not againt all the points on the 'work­ing pa­per', they took a po­si­tion that if they sup­port­ed this move, the game would be af­fect­ed fi­nan­cial­ly in the re­gion and hence would lead to its de­cline in pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Crick­et South Africa has al­ready made their point clear in terms of not sup­port­ing the move, while the oth­er crick­et boards are cur­rent­ly fi­nal­is­ing their po­si­tion on the mat­ter. New Zealand Crick­et seems to be sup­port­ing the move be­cause of their close as­so­ci­a­tion with Crick­et Aus­tralia. Sri Lankan Crick­et will ask the ICC to post­pone the dis­cus­sion on the draft pro­pos­als. SLC has avoid­ed of­fer­ing a de­fin­i­tive stance on the pro­pos­als, but has sug­gest­ed it is re­sis­tant to their im­ple­men­ta­tion, as it would re­sult in a sig­nif­i­cant loss of the board's in­flu­ence on the glob­al gov­er­nance of the game.

Bangladesh Crick­et Board (BCB) pres­i­dent Naz­mul Has­san said the Bangladesh board will con­sid­er the oth­er Full Mem­bers' po­si­tions be­fore mak­ing a de­ci­sion. How­ev­er, ES­P­N­cricin­fo re­port­ed yes­ter­day that when asked for their in­di­vid­ual opin­ions at a board meet­ing, an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of the BCB di­rec­tors said the board should side with the BC­CI or "we will be cor­nered".

The main con­cern for Bangladesh is play­ing Test crick­et–some­thing which is now un­der threat as one of the pro­pos­als is to make the teams ranked Nos. 9 and 10 play in the In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal Cup (the ICC's first-class tour­na­ment for non-Test na­tions) from 2015.

A board di­rec­tor, seek­ing anonymi­ty, said that even if that pro­pos­al is ap­proved, Bangladesh could still play bi­lat­er­al se­ries with the top eight if they align with In­dia.

The ICC work­ing pa­per is propos­ing that Test crick­et is played un­der a two tiered sys­tem in which Eng­land, In­dia and Aus­tralia will not be de­mot­ed while teams like West In­dies and New Zealand would find them­selves in the sec­ond tier.

The is­sue has sparked a rag­ing de­bate for­mer chair­man of the West In­dies Crick­et Board's Gov­er­nance Com­mit­tee, Charles Wilkin, ap­peal­ing to WICB and re­gion­al gov­ern­ments to re­sist the move.