Vin­ode Mam­chan

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) Az­im Bas­sarath is not pleased with the com­ments made by CEO of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) Dr. Ernest Hil­iare con­cern­ing the West In­dies crick­eters.

Dr. Hi­laire re­cent­ly made a num­ber of pro­nounce­ments on the state of West In­dies crick­et dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the Cave Hill cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. He sug­gest­ed that a state of emer­gency of sorts for the re­gion­al game should be im­posed. "Over the last six months, I have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to se­nior West In­dies play­ers, and to re­flect on the op­er­a­tions of the WICB," he said. "I have lis­tened to many past play­ers, taxi dri­vers, im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers, and ho­tel bar­men to name a few. All will give you ad­vice on what to do with West In­dies crick­et. He said: "Peo­ple ask me, 'What will you do about this team? They are an em­bar­rass­ment'! I tell them you have about three more years of em­bar­rass­ment still to wit­ness."

Hi­laire added :"I lis­ten to our play­ers speak, and they speak of mon­ey, that's all that mat­ters to them � in­stant grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Some­times when you speak to the play­ers, you feel a sense of empti­ness. The whole no­tion of be­ing a West In­di­an, and for what they are play­ing has no mean­ing at all." Bas­sarath in re­ply to this said :"This is in­deed very un­for­tu­nate. For the CEO of the WICB to come out pub­lic and speak like this about the re­gion's crick­eters, is not good at all. "I think that Dr. Hil­iare should re-think this po­si­tion on the play­ers and a man in his po­si­tion could on­ly cause more prob­lems with out­bursts like these. The play­ers in the re­gion have not tak­en too well with his com­ments and I think that the com­ments have done more harm than good for West In­dies crick­et. It is re­al­ly a sad day for crick­et when Dr. Hilliare can come out and speak of the play­ers like this."

Hi­laire al­so spoke of the young Un­der-19 play­ers and said that even re­plac­ing the se­nior ones with them, would not help the sit­u­a­tion. Ac­cord­ing to him :"Al­most half of the Un­der-19 team could bare­ly read or write." This has an­gered for­mer man­ag­er of the West In­dies Un­der-19 team Omar Khan. He was the man­ag­er of the team dur­ing the Un­der-19 World Cup and ac­cord­ing to Khan :"Hilliare's com­ments are ter­ri­ble. I have worked with the young play­ers and I can tell you that this is not the sit­u­a­tion with them. They are well ed­u­cat­ed guys and this man has done harm to them by mak­ing such fool­ish com­ments.

"What would the young guys do now, when they face peo­ple. They would be to­tal­ly em­bar­rassed. I think that Hilliare has em­bar­rassed not on­ly the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), his em­ploy­ers but the en­tire Caribbean and it will be in­ter­est­ing to see what the WICB does about this."