The re­cent no-show by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (BCA) and the Guyana Crick­et Board (GCB) at an im­por­tant Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) meet­ing is be­ing viewed as an at­tempt to sab­o­tage the ef­forts of the re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion’s leader de­ter­mined to im­ple­ment gov­er­nance changes wide­ly wel­comed by the crick­et com­mu­ni­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Ker­win John, new­ly re-elect­ed pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (TCA), and a T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) Di­rec­tor on the CWI, the move by the two stake­hold­ers is doomed to fail­ure.

John, in a re­lease, said the two Re­gion­al Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Boards did a great dis­ser­vice to re­gion­al crick­et by their shock­ing ac­tion which can be on­ly de­scribed as a dere­lic­tion of du­ty, and a be­tray­al of the trust placed in them by the peo­ple who put them in of­fice.

“It was sur­pris­ing to many that the BCA and the GCB would go to such lengths to make the CWI, to which they be­long, look bad in the eyes of the West In­di­an pub­lic, and in­deed the in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et com­mu­ni­ty,” said the out­spo­ken John.

The for­mer styl­ish top club bats­man re­it­er­at­ed the view ex­pressed last week, al­so via a re­lease, by his TTCB col­league Ar­joon Ram­lal, al­so a CWI di­rec­tor, that the dis­senters hi­jacked a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process by try­ing to over­turn a con­sen­sus reached by the ma­jor­i­ty stake­hold­ers, and to which they were a part with­out voic­ing any ob­jec­tion.

The Zoom meet­ing two Fri­days ago was abort­ed when a quo­rum was not met for the cru­cial gov­er­nance re­form as the GCB and BCA failed to at­tend, hav­ing opt­ed not to ap­point two rep­re­sen­ta­tives as re­quired by CWI’s Ar­ti­cles of As­so­ci­a­tion.

In a me­dia re­lease, CWI said Guyana for­mal­ly in­di­cat­ed their non-at­ten­dance, while Bar­ba­dos did not pro­vide a re­sponse. It is the sec­ond time that both the GCB and BCA have opt­ed not to at­tend a meet­ing of the mem­bers, the first in­stance oc­cur­ring in 2021.

All oth­er full mem­ber share­hold­ers from the Ja­maica Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (JCA), Lee­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board (LICB), TTCB, and Wind­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board (WICB) were present and pre­pared to pro­ceed.

John says he con­curs with CWI pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Swal­low that gov­er­nance re­form is crit­i­cal to en­sur­ing the re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion’s growth, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and abil­i­ty to in­spire pride across the re­gion.

He said when uni­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion are need­ed at this crit­i­cal junc­ture, the ab­sence of the Guyana and Bar­ba­dos sup­port at the high­est fo­rum un­der­mines the col­lec­tive ef­fort re­quired to move for­ward.

The meet­ing was con­vened to vote on im­ple­ment­ing gov­er­nance re­forms pro­posed by the We­h­by Re­port, craft­ed to mod­ernise CWI’s gov­er­nance frame­work.

On the agen­da were sig­nif­i­cant pro­pos­als, in­clud­ing ad­just­ments to in­tro­duce term lim­its, the term du­ra­tions for the pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent, and oth­er pro­pos­als de­signed to strength­en CWI’s gov­er­nance struc­ture.

John main­tains that the ef­fort to stall the progress of re­gion­al crick­et and en­sure trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and eq­ui­ty in West In­dies crick­et, is a pil­lar of Dr Shal­low’s plan to align the CWI with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

“The CWI un­der Dr Shal­low will re­main com­mit­ted to plac­ing crick­et first and not give in to self­ish and ul­te­ri­or in­cli­na­tions judg­ing from the sup­port we have re­ceived for gov­er­nance changes from all across the Caribbean, in­clud­ing the pub­lic in Bar­ba­dos and Guyana,” John said.