Guyana is the 2025 Re­gion­al Four Day Cham­pi­ons. But – and there is a but – should they re­main as cham­pi­ons?

Yes, there is se­ri­ous doubt and le­git­i­mate ques­tions on Guyana’s ti­tle-win­ning match against the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force (April 8th to 12th). Af­ter some prob­ing, some push­ing and se­ri­ous con­cerns, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) was forced to is­sue a re­lease to put out pos­si­ble in­cen­di­ary threats in cor­po­rate box­es around the Caribbean over sev­er­al in­ci­dents that left a sour taste.

The CWI re­lease states – Guyana Harpy Ea­gles play­ers Veerasam­my Per­maul, Kevlon An­der­son, and Ronal­do Al­imo­hamed have been found guilty of breach­ing the Crick­et West In­dies Code of Con­duct in the sev­enth and fi­nal round of the West In­dies Cham­pi­onship match against Trinidad & To­ba­go Red Force at Queen’s Park Oval.

Per­maul was fined 75 per cent of his match fee for a Lev­el 2 breach of the Crick­et West In­dies Code of Con­duct on day one of the con­test. The spin­ner breached Ar­ti­cles 2.1–2.5 and Para­graph 3.8 of the CWI Code of Con­duct for Play­ers and Play­er Sup­port Per­son­nel, which re­lates to “chang­ing the con­di­tion of the ball in breach of Law 42.3 of the Laws of Crick­et”.

The charge was laid by on-field um­pires Christo­pher Tay­lor and Kashif Sandy af­ter the end of the first day. Per­maul ad­mit­ted to the of­fence and ac­cept­ed the sanc­tion pro­posed by match ref­er­ee Michael Ra­goonath, and as such, there was no need for a for­mal hear­ing.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Kevlon An­der­son was fined 90 per cent of his match fee for a sim­i­lar of­fence on the third day, dur­ing the sec­ond in­nings of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Red Force. An­der­son ac­cept­ed the sanc­tion pro­posed by the match ref­er­ee, and as such, there was no need for a for­mal hear­ing.

All of the above, added to the en­tire text of the re­lease, has con­vinced all with in­ter­est that CWI has to act de­ci­sive­ly now or again be made in­to a laugh­ing stock by some in­tent on dam­ag­ing the im­age of crick­et in the re­gion.

Two of Guyana’s lead­ing bowlers have been found guilty of ball tam­per­ing, and while both men, Ver­sam­my Per­maul and Kevin An­der­son, did not dis­pute the charges, the dev­il will be in the de­tails in the match re­port.

We must hope that Michael Rag­nooth (Match Ref­er­ee), who will pre­pare the re­port af­ter dis­cus­sion with the on-field um­pires, gives specifics on what the par­tic­u­lar ball tam­per­ing of­fence was (whether it was sali­va, an­oth­er ma­te­r­i­al, a coin, a key or an­oth­er de­vice used on the ball).

What I would like CWI to en­sure is that there is full dis­clo­sure and no at­tempts to cov­er up any­thing. This “stain”, which will re­main on Guyana, needs to be prop­er­ly and fair­ly ven­ti­lat­ed in the in­ter­est of all con­cerned.

Al­ready peo­ple are ask­ing whether or not this is the first and on­ly time (al­though twice in the same in­nings by two dif­fer­ent play­ers) that Guyana would have “cheat­ed “in the rules of crick­et. Or is it the first time that Guyana has been caught this sea­son, and there­in lies the co­nun­drum?

Al­so giv­en that the match fees for this re­gion­al tour­na­ment are $2000 US and the over­all match fees for win­ning the tour­na­ment are US $250,000, there is cer­tain­ly a case to be made that los­ing 75%-90% of your match fees to win US $250,000 may be a great temp­ta­tion to some with no in­tegri­ty or true pro­fes­sion­al­ism in their bod­ies.

The oth­er ridicu­lous pun­ish­ment is the ad­di­tion of a mea­gre 5 runs to the oth­er team that was cheat­ed on. This should in­stead be a points de­duc­tion when the par­tic­u­lar match forms part of a com­pe­ti­tion; that would ap­pear to be more of a de­ter­rent. Giv­en the cur­rent rules and if al­lowed to con­tin­ue un­fet­tered, it will fur­ther re­sult in more fre­quent crick­et­ing “cheats “, such as the most re­cent by Guyana.

An­oth­er ma­jor ques­tion should be, What, if any­thing, is the role or no in­volve­ment of the cap­tain of the Guyana team, Tevin Im­lach?' It ap­pears rather odd that not one but rather two play­ers have com­mit­ted al­most the same of­fences, and we are not hear­ing any­thing from or about the cap­tain. On the sur­face, it would ap­pear that we have not been told enough on this mat­ter. If I were Im­lach, I would have been damn an­noyed and ashamed as well by their ac­tions, which have per­haps “stained” Guyana crick­et.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) has adopt­ed a strong pol­i­cy on “ball tam­per­ing“. The In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) has in­creased sanc­tions for ball tam­per­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter a ma­jor in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Aus­tralian play­ers in 2018. Play­ers found guilty of ball tam­per­ing can now face bans of up to six Test match­es or 12 One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als (ODIs).

Here's a more de­tailed break­down:

In­creased Penal­ty:

The max­i­mum penal­ty for a Lev­el 3 of­fence (chang­ing the con­di­tion of the ball) has been raised from 8 to 12 sus­pen­sion points, which trans­lates to a ban of up to six Tests or 12 ODIs.

CWI will need to work quick­ly to in­crease the lev­el of fines to avoid this sort of em­bar­rass­ment in world crick­et caused by Guyana’s dri­ve to win, per­haps at all costs. So, we need to have a fol­low-up po­si­tion on this mat­ter, and let us hope that Dr Kishore Shal­low (CWI Pres­i­dent), Chris Dehring (CWI CEO) and Miles Bas­combe (Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Op­er­a­tions CWI) en­sure that there is a fruit­ful re­sult to all of this un­pleas­ant­ness to pre­vent a re­peat.

Else­where, my biggest “bug­bear” is that our na­tion­al ath­letes lose train­ing time at venues be­cause of de­ci­sions by those in charge of fa­cil­i­ties. Ten­nis is the sport suf­fer­ing af­ter the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion opt­ed to give per­mis­sion for a group in­volved in roller skat­ing to use the Ari­ma Ten­nis Courts, there­fore en­sur­ing that na­tion­al ten­nis play­ers all had to train on a soli­tary court while per­sons were ob­served (caught on cam­era) roller skat­ing on the ten­nis courts.

If the above was not se­ri­ous, it could be con­sid­ered an April Fool’s joke, but af­ter all was checked, there is a lot of in­con­sis­ten­cy in some of the replies, but we must call on the May­or of Ari­ma to take charge and call in the CEO and en­quire what the ra­tio­nale was in giv­ing such per­mis­sion for us­age at this time.

Let us hope this mat­ter can be re­solved im­me­di­ate­ly in the best in­ter­est of our na­tion­al play­ers.