I was re­cent­ly in­vit­ed to at­tend the CARI­COM Re­gion­al Crick­et Con­fer­ence with the ti­tle “Rein­vig­o­rat­ing West In­dies Crick­et - A Sym­po­sium for Strate­gic Col­lab­o­ra­tion and In­no­va­tion.”

In­ter­est­ing in­deed. Who­ev­er coined the ti­tle for the con­fer­ence was spot on, but as some­one asked me be­fore the start of the con­fer­ence, “...is this go­ing to be one of those con­fer­ences where there are a lot of talks, and every­one has a say and noth­ing comes out of it?” I sin­cere­ly hoped not and went in with an open mind, be­liev­ing that those who spoke did it with sin­cer­i­ty and hon­esty, for­get­ting re­la­tion­ships, not car­ing whose toes were mashed be­cause one of the biggest prob­lems fac­ing West In­dies crick­et is cov­er­ing up for one an­oth­er’s mishaps.

In the end, it seems to al­ways come down to what a per­son can bring to the ta­ble to get the sup­port of Coun­try A to vote for them when it comes to elec­tions. They need the vote of that per­son or body — no mat­ter what. In­deed, the vote is im­por­tant to them, and it is sad where we have reached. This sort of bar­ter­ing does not on­ly hap­pen at the Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) lev­el but more so at the ter­ri­to­r­i­al board lev­el. How many times have we heard sto­ries where peo­ple go in­to an elec­tion and are promised po­si­tions in ex­change for a vote? Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it hap­pens all the time, go­ing back at least 15 years. At the ter­ri­to­r­i­al board lev­el, peo­ple were hand­ed po­si­tions based on how they vot­ed, and it did not mat­ter if the per­son could do a job; that was ir­rel­e­vant as the most im­por­tant as­pect of the per­son was the abil­i­ty to buy the vote and keep that per­son hap­py. When the next elec­tion came around, one vote was al­ready se­cured. Don’t be sur­prised, as I have per­son­al­ly seen and ex­pe­ri­enced that lev­el of bar­ter­ing and dis­hon­esty in get­ting their friends and as­so­ciates in­to po­si­tions.

The con­fer­ence it­self opened up with T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter and Chair of CARI­COM’s Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Sub-Com­mit­tee on Crick­et, Dr. Kei­th Row­ley, giv­ing an overview of the con­fer­ence and pulling no punch­es on the state of West In­dies crick­et and stat­ing that the par­ties in at­ten­dance were gath­ered to fix West In­dies crick­et. How­ev­er, ar­tic­u­lat­ing this was just a start to try and get things right. Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos Mia Mot­t­ley spoke as one of the re­gion­al lead­ers to give re­marks, and, as usu­al, she was at her elo­quent best. She was fiery, but you had to sit up and take no­tice when she spoke. She is one of the best speak­ers on the world stage; she does not have to shout at the top of her voice; she sticks to her points and makes them with a type of re­mark­able flu­en­cy that can on­ly be ad­mired. Her two main points were sep­a­rat­ing the busi­ness of crick­et and the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et. An­oth­er one of her points was the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) con­tract. She want­ed to get her eyes on the con­tract, as she said, “A con­tract that is so un­equal­ly yoked ought not to stand for 50 years. That’s a half a cen­tu­ry.” When I first heard about the CPL con­tract years ago, I won­dered why some­one would sign a con­tract for 50 years un­less there were some un­der­ly­ing is­sues and promis­es not writ­ten in­to the con­tract.

Then came some vir­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tions by some leg­ends of the game. Sir Andy Roberts, as ex­pect­ed, opened the bowl­ing but was not at his best. He lament­ed the state of West In­dies crick­et but seemed to be hold­ing back on what he want­ed to say, which was a pity be­cause he al­ways said what­ev­er came to his mind about West In­dies crick­et.

En­ter Sir Vi­vian Richards, an­oth­er one who has, over the years, been crit­i­cal about West In­dies crick­et, but like Sir Andy, seemed to be hold­ing back and was just touch­ing on the out­skirts as to the rea­sons why West In­dies is in the po­si­tion it is to­day. To me, he spent most of the time wish­ing some­thing pos­i­tive would come out of the con­fer­ence.

En­ter a very emo­tion­al and pas­sion­ate Michael “Whis­per­ing Death” Hold­ing. He re­mind­ed me of when he was glid­ing in to bowl, de­liv­er­ing bounc­er af­ter bounc­er, and sud­den­ly threw in a york­er. Right­ful­ly, he called on the CWI to stop the mad­ness with the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards and their peo­ple and get West In­dies crick­et back to where it be­longs. He lament­ed the con­tro­ver­sy with first­ly the Guyana Crick­et Board (GCB) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) and begged the CWI to straight­en out those prob­lems, clean up the mess, or at least re­spond to the is­sues. On the verge of tears, he called on the Caribbean heads of gov­ern­ment to pres­sure the CWI board in­to re­struc­tur­ing its gov­er­nance mod­el.

CWI Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Miles Bas­combe spoke at length about the crick­et and per­for­mance frame­work. I pre­vi­ous­ly brought up the 4-day tour­na­ment, ask­ing for a longer re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tion as some younger play­ers are just wait­ing around for a call to play crick­et since the sea­son end­ed on April 20th. Those play­ers will sit around some­where un­til the Su­per 50 or, if they are lucky, to be se­lect­ed on some West In­dies team. Bas­combe does, how­ev­er, ap­pear to be very hap­py with what is tak­ing place on the re­gion­al front with the red ball game.

An in­ter­est­ing pan­el dis­cus­sion was had on the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion; how­ev­er, one point was that Acts of Par­lia­ment should be amend­ed to re­quire re­gion­al boards to be struc­tured trans­par­ent­ly and ac­count­able. Well, I sup­pose we should not hold our breaths on that even though, based on what is go­ing on cur­rent­ly, such a sug­ges­tion makes per­fect sense.

The CPL con­tract took a lot of blows from all sides. It was heart­en­ing to hear that CPL CEO Pe­te Rus­sell was will­ing to come to the ta­ble to re­view cer­tain as­pects of the ex­ist­ing con­tract be­tween them and CWI. The first one seat­ed at the ta­ble would be Mia Mot­t­ley and all of the West In­dies can feel com­fort­able with what­ev­er new is put on the ta­ble.

As it start­ed, the con­fer­ence was closed off by Dr Row­ley, who touched on the strengths, weak­ness­es, op­por­tu­ni­ties, and threats that West In­dies crick­et faced. He spoke about men­tor­ship, a com­mer­cial and de­vel­op­men­tal arm of West In­dies crick­et, struc­ture of ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards, but, most im­por­tant­ly, as­sured that there will be a fol­low-up meet­ing to dis­cuss what came out of this sym­po­sium and to im­ple­ment some rec­om­men­da­tions. One can on­ly hope that he is cor­rect so I can an­swer some fans and say that it was not just talk, but some ac­tion will come out of the 2 days.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.