So the Guyana crick­eters Ver­sam­my Per­maul and Kelvon An­der­son, who were charged with ball tam­per­ing, have had a change of heart.

Or have they re­al­ly? Or is all of this just a mi­rage?

Or did some­one con­vey to them the need to change their ap­par­ent pre­vi­ous state­ments/com­ments ?

Is it state­ments or is it com­ments that they (the two Guyanese crick­eters ) made ?

Al­so, can any­one say what form the “ball tam­per­ing “ be­ing dis­put­ed now took ?

There is too much un­cer­tain­ty, and Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) needs to clear the air again.

Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) is­sued a press re­lease on April 12th, 2025, on ball tam­per­ing which in part stat­ed as fol­lows:

“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 and To­ba­go Red Force. An­der­son ac­cept­ed the sanc­tion pro­posed by the match ref­er­ee, and as such, there was no need for a for­mal hear­ing.

In each in­stance the ball was changed, with the bat­ting team giv­en the op­tion to choose.”

There­fore, the crick­et­ing pub­lic in the re­gion is stunned by these de­vel­op­ments and the re­ports em­a­nat­ing from the Guyana Crick­et Board that this mat­ter is be­ing tak­en to court, as they have ba­si­cal­ly stat­ed and sug­gest­ed that the play­ers were co­erced in­to agree­ing with the fines and pun­ish­ment and are in­no­cent of the crime of ball tam­per­ing.

Be­fore all of this, let us put in con­text the fact that Guyanese Cap­tain Tevin Im­lach was al­leged to have re­port­ed as say­ing he was shocked by the pun­ish­ment, as he felt there was not enough ev­i­dence of such, and then days lat­er we read of the Guyana Crick­et Board’s ac­tion.

All of this has again un­der­mined the leg­isla­tive rules and reg­u­la­tions of Crick­et West In­dies, as this is the third le­gal chal­lenge in the space of less than 12 months against the CWI.

Giv­en that the pre­vi­ous two (the chal­lenge by the Guyana Crick­et Board to the ap­point­ment of Az­im Bas­sarath as vice pres­i­dent and the Bar­ba­dos Crick­et Board’s chal­lenge to the pro­posed sus­pen­sion of their cap­tain Ray­mon Reifer fol­low­ing the aban­doned 50 overs fi­nal ) left CWI with black eyes, we should not be sur­prised by this lat­est re­ac­tion and maybe even the out­come.

This one would ap­pear eas­i­er to over­come, pro­vid­ing that the of­fi­cials have a doc­u­ment in writ­ing, signed by the re­spec­tive Guyanese play­ers and prob­a­bly co-signed by the cap­tain or an­oth­er se­nior Guyanese of­fi­cial as a wit­ness to the whole af­fair , along with the three (3) match of­fi­cials. What­ev­er hap­pens , giv­en this re­cent trend to ap­peal and con­test every de­ci­sion by cer­tain crick­et boards in the re­gion , CWI will need to en­sure that their rules are prop­er­ly en­sconced in good law.

How­ev­er, at the end of the day, yet again, West In­dies crick­et and its im­age in­ter­na­tion­al­ly have been tar­nished from with­in , from its own, and there­fore to many on the out­side , the rea­son why crick­et in the West In­dies is in such low de­mand by op­po­nents and even in­ter­na­tion­al club teams (In­di­an Pre­mier League , The Hun­dred , and the Big Bash).

While we await the out­come of these hear­ings, which on­ly ben­e­fit lawyers in the re­spec­tive coun­tries, that is, if they are al­lowed to pro­ceed and not that CWI with­draws its ac­tion again, we all need to ob­serve care­ful­ly who is mak­ing “ cer­tain dis­guised moves “. If, as in­tel­li­gent peo­ple , we care­ful­ly ob­serve that , then per­haps we can at­tack some of it “ at source “.

For what­ev­er it is worth (and it cer­tain­ly is), it is worth Crick­et West In­dies' rep­u­ta­tion and track record for them to see this out to the very end , what­ev­er the judge­ment; oth­er­wise, it be­comes far too easy for re­gion­al boards to keep slap­ping down and laugh­ing open­ly in the face of CWI de­ci­sions.

What makes all of this both fun­ny and con­temp­tu­ous is that it is the very same in­di­vid­u­als (Di­rec­tors of CWI) that are thrash­ing the name and in­tegri­ty of CWI, to which they are ma­jor share­hold­ers. Nowhere in the world would this be al­lowed, much less tol­er­at­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies for this to oc­cur among its own mem­ber­ship.

But there is a but; it prob­a­bly sug­gests most of these Caribbean crick­et di­rec­tors, first and fore­most, be­lieve in their coun­try (ter­ri­to­ry first) and the West In­dies last.

Win or lose, CWI needs to stand their ground in this ball tam­per­ing mat­ter, what­ev­er the fi­nal judge­ment may be. They need to see it through and stop ap­pear­ing to cave in.