Vin­ode Mam­chan

The cur­rent fi­nan­cial down­turn has forced the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) to put on hold a pro­posed pro­fes­sion­al crick­et league. This was re­vealed by di­rec­tor of the WICB, Dr Allen Sam­my yes­ter­day. Ac­cord­ing to Sam­my the state of the world's econ­o­my has af­fect­ed spon­sor­ship and as a re­sult the WICB has de­cid­ed that ef­forts to start a pro­fes­sion­al league in the West In­dies would prove use­less. A year ago, the WICB re­ceived a pre­lim­i­nary re­port from for­mer CEO of In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et World Cup 2007 Inc Chris Dehring which sug­gest­ed the board looked for fran­chis­es from around the Caribbean to fund the project. How­ev­er, when the re­port was dis­cussed at last month's agm, it was de­cid­ed that the cur­rent fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion would not sup­port the idea.

"We re­al­ly want­ed to look in­to this pro­fes­sion­al league be­cause there are tremen­dous ben­e­fits to be de­rived. We how­ev­er, took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the fact that we have not been able to get spon­sors for our reg­u­lar tour­na­ments in the Caribbean, such is the times we are fac­ing. "The idea how­ev­er is a very good one and we would be press­ing for­ward with this as the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion gets bet­ter." Dr Sam­my not­ed that spon­sors are sup­port­ing the more pop­u­lar forms of the game such as the fast paced T20. He said when the WICB re­sume its ef­forts for a pro­fes­sion­al league, it would be look­ing to have the teams play T20 crick­et, as a rev­enue earn­er.

Mean­while, on the do­mes­tic scene, Sam­my and sports pro­mot­er An­tho­ny Har­ford has been charged with the du­ty of mak­ing the top flight of crick­et in this coun­try, the pre­mier­ship–a se­mi-pro­fes­sion­al tour­na­ment. Sam­my said that great progress has been made in putting to­geth­er a plan of ac­tion and very soon a doc­u­ment will be avail­able for the clubs to look at. "We have had many dis­cus­sions on a se­mi-pro league and we have been able to gath­er a lot of in­for­ma­tion. The TTCB has asked us to put it in­to a syn­op­sis and it will be pre­sent­ed to the clubs for their pe­rusal. Af­ter this process, we will meet again and look to put con­crete plans in place to make this thing a re­al­i­ty."