BRIDGETOWN � Vice Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, has urged the West In­dies Crick­et Board to im­ple­ment the most cru­cial re­form as­pect of the Pat­ter­son Re­port.

Telling the WICB pres­i­dent Dave Cameron that re­form was the "du­ty of his gen­er­a­tion", Sir Hi­lary point­ed to Car­los Brath­waite's hero­ics of four six­es off the first four balls of the fi­nal over in the men's fi­nal which fired West In­dies to vic­to­ry over Eng­land, and stressed it was now left to the re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body to com­plete the process.

"All that is now re­quired is for the WICB, pres­i­dent and di­rec­tors, to com­plete the over," Sir Hi­lary said in a let­ter to me­dia.

"There are two balls left to face, one is to ac­cept the gov­er­nance re­form that calls for the Coun­cil of Stake­hold­ers as set out in the Pat­ter­son Re­port, and the oth­er is to rec­og­nize that by ac­cept­ing the gov­er­nance in­ter­de­pen­dence of crick­et and so­ci­ety is not to lose au­ton­o­my.

The Pat­ter­son Re­port, com­mis­sioned by the WICB and au­thored by for­mer Ja­maica prime min­is­ter PJ Pat­ter­son, was pro­duced in 2007 but its main rec­om­men­da­tions have been ig­nored by the WICB.

Among these pro­pos­als was the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Coun­cil of Stake­hold­ers, com­pris­ing 23 mem­bers and ac­cord­ing to the Re­port "rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a wide cross sec­tion of stake­hold­ers and will de­ter­mine poli­cies and strate­gies and pro­vide guid­ance for the de­vel­op­ment of West In­dies Crick­et."

This coun­cil would ap­point the pres­i­dent, vice-pres­i­dent and the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tors.

Sir Hi­lary, a for­mer WICB di­rec­tor, warned that fail­ure to make these bold de­ci­sions could see West In­dies crick­et de­stroyed by "in­ter­nal con­flict and ac­ri­mo­ny."

"With­out this re­form West In­dies runs the risk of be­ing razed to the ground by in­ter­nal con­flict and ac­ri­mo­ny," he point­ed out.

"The gold­en mon­u­ment we have all built as a trib­ute to our cul­tur­al tenac­i­ty and col­lec­tive wis­dom must come first. This is your task, Mr Pres­i­dent. It's a du­ty of your gen­er­a­tion."

No­tice­ably, Sir Hi­lary made no ref­er­ence to the most re­cent CARI­COM-com­mis­sioned Gov­er­nance Re­port which last year called for the "im­me­di­ate dis­so­lu­tion" of the WICB.

Speak­ing last No­vem­ber af­ter the re­port was made pub­lic, Sir Hi­lary said he be­lieved in­sti­tu­tions like UWI and the WICB need­ed to be "pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty" but al­so adapt to chang­ing times.

Grena­da's Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Mitchell, chair­man of CARI­COM's sub­com­mit­tee on crick­et, said re­cent­ly that the na­tion group­ing was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the rec­om­men­da­tions aris­ing from the Gov­er­nance Re­port. CMC