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Monday, February 3, 2025

A call for CWI not to recognise GCB after vote

by

SPORTS DESK
10 days ago
20250115
Guyana Cricket Board president, Bissoondyal Singh, wrote to CWI the night before the special meeting to signal he would not attend.

Guyana Cricket Board president, Bissoondyal Singh, wrote to CWI the night before the special meeting to signal he would not attend.

A promi­nent Bar­ba­di­an crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tor has called on Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) not to recog­nise the Guyana Crick­et Board (GCB) as a stake­hold­er in re­gion­al crick­et, be­cause the cur­rent board is not legal­ly recog­nised.

The com­men­ta­tor who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty ex­plained: “The pres­i­dent of the Guyana Crick­et Board (GCB), Bis­soondyal Singh, ex­tend­ed his term from two to four years with­out the ap­proval of Par­lia­ment be­cause their con­sti­tu­tion is an act of par­lia­ment. The act clear­ly states the elec­tion in GCB must be held in Jan­u­ary. It is spelt out clear­ly in the Ad­min­is­tra­tion Act.

The Crick­et Ad­min­is­tra­tion Bill, which was passed in 2014, seeks to pro­vide le­gal ad­min­is­tra­tive guide­lines for crick­et. It al­lows the Guyana Crick­et Board (GCB) to be es­tab­lished as a cor­po­rate body com­pris­ing the De­mer­ara, Es­se­qui­bo, and Berbice Crick­et Boards, all of which are to be made cor­po­rate en­ti­ties too.

A sec­tion of the act al­so ad­dress­es the is­sue of phan­tom vot­ing for the elec­tion of per­sons to ad­min­is­tra­tive po­si­tions. It will give pow­er to the Min­is­ter of Sport, whose role will be to ap­point the reg­u­la­tor.

The bill pro­vides for bet­ter fi­nan­cial ac­count­abil­i­ty, and as such, the GCB would be re­quired to present time­ly au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­ports to the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, as well as the Na­tion­al Sports Com­mis­sion.

The ad­min­is­tra­tor con­tin­ued: “He was sup­posed to have an OGM in Oc­to­ber for boards to sub­mit nom­i­na­tions, which nev­er took place. There must al­so be an ad­ver­tise­ment in dai­ly news­pa­pers in Guyana be­fore De­cem­ber 31, and none of these things took place.

“I am, there­fore, call­ing on Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) to not recog­nise the GCB as a stake­hold­er at this point un­til they can have mean­ing­ful di­a­logue with the gov­ern­ment of Guyana be­cause at this point the GCB is il­le­gal­ly in place to run crick­et in the coun­try.”

Singh said, “That sug­ges­tion by that ‘Ad­min­is­tra­tor’ is mis­lead­ing ... The Guyana Crick­et Ad­min­is­tra­tion Act has pro­vi­sions in the Ar­ti­cles to amend all the con­sti­tu­tions of the Es­se­qui­bo, De­mer­ara, and Berbice (the three coun­ties), in­clud­ing GCB, by the mem­ber­ship.”

“Al­so, it is not me who ex­tend­ed the tenure of of­fice … it was the full mem­ber­ship, and it was passed unan­i­mous­ly. The pres­i­dent and ex­ec­u­tives of the GCB don’t vote … un­less they are al­so mem­bers of the coun­ty boards ... it is the three coun­ty boards that moved the mo­tion.”

Singh point­ed to Sched­ule I – The Con­sti­tu­tion of the Guyana Crick­et Board, and page 26, un­der Sec­tion 24, states: Al­ter­ation and In­ter­pre­ta­tion of The Con­sti­tu­tion: (a) “The Con­sti­tu­tion of the Board may be added to, amend­ed, or re­pealed by a res­o­lu­tion at a Gen­er­al Meet­ing that is sup­port­ed by at least two-thirds of mem­bers vot­ing and there­after shall be in­clud­ed in the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Board. Mem­ber boards shall be giv­en 21 days no­tice of the Gen­er­al Meet­ing to dis­cuss and vote on the res­o­lu­tion.”

In De­cem­ber, the GCB, as well as the Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (BCA), failed to at­tend a board meet­ing of the re­gion­al crick­et body as they were look­ing to im­ple­ment gov­er­nance rec­om­men­da­tions made in the We­h­by Re­port.

Come make your case: CWI pres­i­dent Shal­low urges BCA and GCB

Mean­while, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low has em­pha­sised that a spe­cial meet­ing sched­uled for next month rep­re­sents a crit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (BCA) and the Guyana Crick­et Board (GCB) to present their views on gov­er­nance re­form.

How­ev­er, Shal­low has made it clear that the re­gion­al body in­tends to move for­ward with or with­out their in­put.

“This time, I can state with a mea­sure of cer­ti­tude that we are go­ing to pro­ceed and progress with gov­er­nance re­form at that spe­cial meet­ing,” Shal­low said dur­ing an ap­pear­ance on WESN TV last Fri­day.

The BCA and GCB’s ab­sence from a De­cem­ber 6 meet­ing to vote on the We­h­by Re­port—rec­om­men­da­tions made by Ja­maican busi­ness mogul Don We­h­by—re­sult­ed in the meet­ing be­ing ad­journed due to a lack of quo­rum.

De­spite this, Shal­low re­mains com­mit­ted to ad­vanc­ing the re­form process.

Shal­low re­it­er­at­ed his com­mit­ment to in­clu­siv­i­ty and urged the BCA and GCB to seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty pro­vid­ed by next month’s meet­ing.

“The spe­cial meet­ing will pro­vide the per­fect plat­form for you to come and lay out your case ... Come to the meet­ing and dis­cuss. One thing that is cer­tain un­der my lead­er­ship is an in­clu­sive ap­proach. Every­one gets a voice and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to voice their opin­ion,” Shal­low de­clared.


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