ST JOHN’S, An­tigua — Even as Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to the Guyana Harpy Ea­gles af­ter they cap­tured their third suc­ces­sive West In­dies Cham­pi­onship, he has made it clear that there will be a ze­ro tol­er­ance on in­tegri­ty breach­es.

The Harpy Ea­gles won the ti­tle af­ter their match against the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force end­ed in a draw on Sat­ur­day to take home the top prize of US$250,000.

How­ev­er, in their fi­nal round match against T&T, Kevlon An­der­son and Veerasam­my Per­maul were found guilty of al­ter­ing the con­di­tion of the ball.

An­der­son was sub­se­quent­ly fined 90 per cent of his match fee while Per­maul was fined 75 per cent.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Dr Shal­low made it clear that de­spite the team’s suc­cess, CWI main­tains a strict pol­i­cy on in­tegri­ty.

“While we cel­e­brate the suc­cess of the sea­son, I want to re­mind play­ers that CWI holds the in­tegri­ty of the game in the high­est re­gard. There is ze­ro tol­er­ance for con­duct that un­der­mines the spir­it of crick­et and brings the game in­to dis­re­pute.

“The lega­cy of West In­dies crick­et has al­ways been built on tal­ent, pride, and in­tegri­ty, and we are com­mit­ted to up­hold­ing our core val­ues,” Dr Shal­low said.

De­spite the in­ci­dent, Dr Shal­low laud­ed the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons for their con­sis­ten­cy, dis­ci­pline, and ex­cel­lence through­out the sea­son.

“On be­half of CWI, I of­fer sin­cere con­grat­u­la­tions to the Guyana Harpy Ea­gles on their re­mark­able achieve­ment.

“Win­ning back-to-back ti­tles is no small feat, and their un­de­feat­ed run this sea­son is a tes­ta­ment to the lead­er­ship of cap­tain Tevin Im­lach and the col­lec­tive ef­fort of the play­ers and coach­ing staff,” Dr Shal­low said.

The CWI pres­i­dent said he was al­so pleased with the high stan­dard of play dur­ing the du­ra­tion of the four-day tour­na­ment.

“We are equal­ly en­cour­aged by the over­all stan­dard of play across the tour­na­ment.

“The emer­gence of new tal­ent, the de­vel­op­ment of our fast bowlers, and the im­proved ap­pli­ca­tion of our bat­ters show promis­ing signs that align with our long-term vi­sion for West In­dies crick­et, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Test for­mat,” Dr Shal­low added.

He said the com­pe­ti­tion had seen in­creased on­line view­er­ship, while re­ject­ing the no­tion that the longer for­mat of the game was dy­ing.

“There has been a pre­vail­ing nar­ra­tive that the four-day for­mat is in de­cline. How­ev­er, a view of the da­ta sug­gests oth­er­wise,” Dr Shal­low main­tained.

“This year’s tour­na­ment was wide­ly viewed, and the record-break­ing on­line en­gage­ment demon­strates that there is still a strong, pas­sion­ate fan­base for red ball crick­et.

“The view­er­ship num­bers we saw this sea­son in­di­cate a deep con­nec­tion with the longer for­mat, show­ing that it re­mains a vi­tal and rel­e­vant part of the crick­et­ing land­scape,” he fur­ther added.

“The grow­ing view­er­ship is a sign that fans con­tin­ue to ap­pre­ci­ate the tac­ti­cal, pa­tient na­ture of four-day crick­et. As we move for­ward, Crick­et West In­dies is com­mit­ted to fur­ther strength­en­ing the Test for­mat, en­sur­ing that our play­ers are equipped to com­pete at the high­est lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.” CMC