BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos–Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Joel Gar­ner, has hit out at the Cari­com-com­mis­sioned Gov­er­nance Pan­el's con­tro­ver­sial rec­om­men­da­tion that the West In­dies Crick­et Board be dis­solved.

Gar­ner, the leg­endary for­mer West In­dies fast bowler and a cur­rent WICB di­rec­tor, ques­tioned the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of the pro­posed move, con­tend­ing that all the boards which com­prised the re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body were le­git­i­mate le­gal en­ti­ties and there­fore, they could not be sim­ply struck down.

"My ques­tions are: is the BCA which was con­sti­tut­ed by an act of Par­lia­ment in 1933, an il­le­gal en­ti­ty and my se­lec­tion as pres­i­dent of the BCA and il­le­gal act?" Gar­ner queried, while speak­ing at the BCA's quar­ter­ly meet­ing here Thurs­day.

"So I have to ask the ques­tion: is the GCB (Guyana Crick­et Board) an il­le­gal en­ti­ty? Is the Ja­maica Crick­et [As­so­ci­a­tion] an il­le­gal en­ti­ty? Is the Lee­ward Is­lands Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion an il­le­gal en­ti­ty? Is the Wind­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board an il­le­gal en­ti­ty? Is the TTCB (Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board) an il­le­gal en­ti­ty?"

He con­tin­ued: "If they are so, they have all been es­tab­lished in coun­tries in which the prime min­is­ters are mak­ing noise and they have to tell the pub­lic of the re­gion if these en­ti­ties are il­le­gal, how they were able to re­main vi­brant for so long."

In propos­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of the WICB, the Gov­er­nance Pan­el, head­ed by UWI Cave Hill Prin­ci­pal Eu­dine Bar­riteau, al­so rec­om­mend­ed the ap­point­ment of an in­ter­im board "whose struc­ture and com­po­si­tion will be rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from the now proven, ob­so­lete gov­er­nance frame­work."

And while Cari­com heads have em­braced the rec­om­men­da­tion and re­solved to en­sure its im­ple­men­ta­tion, the WICB, head­ed by con­tro­ver­sial pres­i­dent Dave Cameron, has re­ject­ed it as an "un­nec­es­sary and in­tru­sive de­mand."

The board al­so slammed the re­port as "lim­it­ed in scope", ar­gu­ing that the pan­el's in­ves­ti­ga­tions had "trig­gered find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions ... which are not sup­port­ed by the facts."

"The dis­so­lu­tion of the Board is sim­ply not a vi­able le­gal or prac­ti­cal op­tion and car­ries a ma­jor fi­nan­cial risk which the pan­el ei­ther ig­nored or was un­aware of," the WICB told Cari­com in a writ­ten re­sponse ear­li­er this year.

Last month, T&T Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said Cari­com was so­lic­it­ing le­gal ad­vice on the "le­gal po­si­tion" of West In­dies crick­et.