ROSEAU, Do­mini­ca—Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent & the Grenadines (SVG), Ralph Gon­salves, has ex­pressed his dis­ap­point­ment with the man­ner in which West In­dies crick­et has been run un­der cur­rent Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) pres­i­dent, Dr Kishore Shal­low.

Speak­ing dur­ing a re­cent lec­ture in Do­mini­ca, Gon­salves said the West In­dies team’s re­cent per­for­mances left much to be de­sired.

“I have not seen the sort of changes for the bet­ter that I re­al­ly thought that he would have led,” Gon­salves, a crick­et en­thu­si­ast, ad­mit­ted.

“If you look at the per­for­mances of the teams, they are be­low par. The T20, we in­vest so much mon­ey; it’s ter­ri­ble, and it doesn’t mat­ter what gloss you put on it; you have to look at the re­sults.

“And there are lots and lots of crit­i­cisms by ex­pe­ri­enced ad­min­is­tra­tors and for­mer Test crick­eters about how West In­dies crick­et is go­ing un­der his lead­er­ship. It’s not a pos­i­tive record at all.

“I gen­uine­ly thought that he would have made some changes for the bet­ter, but I haven’t seen them,” he added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Gon­salves said Dr Shal­low, who took over the lead­er­ship of CWI from Ricky Sker­ritt in March 2023 af­ter be­ing elect­ed un­op­posed at its 24th An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in An­tigua, had done very lit­tle to im­prove how West In­dies crick­et was be­ing run.

He ac­cused CWI of op­er­at­ing as an “en­trenched pri­vate op­er­a­tion” and sug­gest­ed that crick­et need­ed to be de­vel­oped in schools across the re­gion.

“The same bu­reau­crat­ic, life­less kind of ad­min­is­tra­tion. We don’t see any­thing that they are do­ing that is im­pact­ing the game on the field in some pos­i­tive way to pro­vide re­sults that the peo­ple want,” Gon­salves ar­gued.

“West In­dies crick­et is a pub­lic good, and they’re still run­ning it as though it is an en­trenched, pri­vate op­er­a­tion. They’ll have en­gage­ments with the CARI­COM Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Sub-Com­mit­tee on crick­et, but that is just win­dow dress­ing.

“We have to get more re­sources in or­der that we can de­vel­op crick­et from the schools. Gov­ern­ments will put mon­ey in­to it, and we are putting in mon­ey, but we need to see a lot more de­vel­op­ment tak­ing place,” he added.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, his com­ments came just days be­fore a CWI meet­ing with its full mem­ber share­hold­ers.

At the meet­ing, which is sched­uled for Fri­day, share­hold­ers will vote on im­ple­ment­ing the gov­er­nance re­forms rec­om­mend­ed by the We­h­by Re­port.

Share­hold­ers will be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­sid­er the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed pro­pos­als again re­gard­ing the du­ra­tion of the term of of­fice of CWI’s pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent, as well as the in­tro­duc­tion of term lim­its. (CMC)