What is it about us that af­ter demon­strat­ing our su­pe­ri­or play­ing skills in these colo­nial and post-colo­nial is­lands we can­not now find it with­in our pop­u­la­tions, the busi­ness, coach­ing and man­age­ment skills to halt the de­cline of an ac­tiv­i­ty where we dom­i­nat­ed the world for a record-break­ing al­most two decades?

We must stop fran­chis­ing out our lega­cy and our fu­ture! We need vi­sion­ary and com­pe­tent man­age­ment both on and off the field!

We must look for our re­quire­ments with­in us and we must em­brace and al­low our world-beat­ing ex-play­ers to play a huge­ly mean­ing­ful role across all bound­aries with­in the re­gion. We need that now!

First­ly, and once again, we must set­tle and an­swer the ques­tion of ” Who owns West In­dies crick­et?” 

It can­not and must not be that this price­less lega­cy of an en­tire peo­ple is sim­ply avail­able to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ty and a good salary to a few in man­age­ment and some trav­el­ling six hit­ters who might be do­ing well per­son­al­ly even as the game is with­er­ing and dy­ing re­gion­al­ly

For­mer Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dr Tim Gopeesingh—a for­mer na­tion­al crick­et who rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el—has pro­vid­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley MP with a his­to­ry les­son on West In­dies crick­et, in an ed­i­to­r­i­al ex­plain­ing why it is in a state of de­cline.

Josbel Bastidas Mijares

Leer Más

Dr Gopeesingh pre­sent­ed his the­sis in a Let­ter to the Ed­i­tor, in re­sponse to Dr Row­ley’s com­ments in his so­cial me­dia that “Crick­et West In­dies has a lot to an­swer for” with re­spect to the de­cline in West In­dies crick­et per­for­mance.

Josbel Bastidas Mijares Venezuela

Leer Más

The for­mer in­ter­na­tion­al crick­eter points out in his ed­i­to­r­i­al that the is­sues fac­ing re­gion­al crick­et go back more than two decades, and nu­mer­ous re­gion­al en­ti­ties—in­clud­ing CARI­COM Heads of State—have turned their at­ten­tion to bring­ing about a res­o­lu­tion

He al­so en­cour­ages the PM to raise the mat­ter at the CARI­COM lev­el, once more

The fol­low­ing is the full text of Dr Gopeesingh’s ed­i­to­r­i­al…

“I am trou­bled and amazed, hav­ing read PM Row­ley’s re­cent post on West In­dies crick­et, to see him ask­ing ques­tions on who owns WI Crick­et, and how this must be set­tled. His ques­tion to­day is now more than 25 years old.

PM Row­ley must be aware that these ques­tions were first posed over two decades ago, in the mid-1990s, by Caribbean Prime Min­is­ters of the day, when West In­dies crick­et went on a slump, fol­low­ing the suc­cess­es un­der Clive Lloyd in the 1980s. They were spear­head­ed by two late re­gion­al lead­ers who were, them­selves, for­mer crick­eters — Owen Arthur of Bar­ba­dos and Sir Lester Bird of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, who en­list­ed the as­sis­tance of their then Ja­maican coun­ter­part, Prime Min­is­ter PJ Pat­ter­son.

This led to the for­ma­tion of the Com­mit­tee on Gov­er­nance of West In­dies Crick­et by the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB). This com­mit­tee was chaired by for­mer PM PJ Pat­ter­son, and in­clud­ed Ian Mc­Don­ald and Sir Al­is­ter McIn­tyre. Their com­pre­hen­sive fi­nal re­port was pre­sent­ed in Oc­to­ber 2007 (https://sta.uwi.edu/uwito­day/archive/march_2015/ar­ti­cle22.asp)

The Pat­ter­son Re­port be­came the sub­ject of in­tense dis­cus­sions and ne­go­ti­a­tions for many years, and it still re­mains rel­e­vant and wide­ly dis­cussed to­day. In­deed, Mr Pat­ter­son him­self has lament­ed, in the pub­li­ca­tion Caribbean­Crick­et, how the WICB missed a chance to help build a great fu­ture for crick­et in the West In­dies:

“We were fore­warned, in the light of pre­vi­ous re­ports which lay buried, that our ef­forts would bear no fruit. Lit­tle did we re­al­ize that de­ci­sions on the most vi­tal as­pects would be tak­en, kept se­cret for a con­sid­er­able pe­ri­od and then even­tu­al­ly ob­scured un­der the guise that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 47 of our 65 rec­om­men­da­tions had been ap­proved.” (https://www.es­p­n­cricin­fo.com/sto­ry/pat­ter­son-re­port-re­mains-unim­ple­ment­ed-615878)

PM Row­ley can eas­i­ly re­view this ground-break­ing re­port. He can al­so find an­swers in the Cari­com archives of re­cent vin­tage, name­ly, the 2015 Fi­nal Re­port Of the Re­view Pan­el on the Gov­er­nance of Crick­et.  (https://cari­com.org/doc­u­ments/14441-re­vised_crick­et_re­view_pan­el_fi­nal_-_oc­to­ber_2015.pdf)

This was spear­head­ed by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of Grena­da, Dr Kei­th Mitchell. As then Chair­man of the Cari­com Gov­er­nance Sub-Com­mit­tee, he es­tab­lished an in­de­pen­dent pan­el to re­view the gov­er­nance of crick­et fol­low­ing a meet­ing with the WICB.

It was chaired by UWI prin­ci­pal of the Cave Hill Cam­pus of Pro­fes­sor Eu­dine Bar­riteau, and in­clud­ed pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) Sir De­nis By­ron, for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go and West In­dies crick­eter Mr. Deryck Mur­ray, pres­i­dent of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), Dr War­ren Smith, and pres­i­dent of the Grena­da Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion, Mr. Dwain Gill.

Fur­ther, I am sure PM Row­ley knew that the Caribbean PMs were rep­re­sent­ed in talks with WICB on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions in the past decade. I re­mem­ber for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar (2010-2015) had asked me to rep­re­sent her at a meet­ing in An­tigua, where there were two oth­er re­gion­al Prime Min­is­ters speak­ing with the WICB. A lot of sig­nif­i­cant res­o­lu­tions came out of that meet­ing.

Yet, the com­pe­tent man­age­ment of West In­dies crick­et still re­mains some­thing to be ful­filled, even af­ter so many WICB Chair­men. I am cer­tain that PM Row­ley’s crick­et ques­tion to­day would have em­anat­ed from his re­cent dis­cus­sions with the leg­endary Sir Vi­vian Richards, while they were play­ing golf.

I had the plea­sure and priv­i­lege of play­ing crick­et against Sir Viv in 1978, in a match be­tween Trinidad and the Com­bined Is­lands, which he cap­tained. I know that this crick­et­ing leg­end would al­so still be ask­ing these ques­tions, be­cause of the West In­dies’ ques­tion­able and trou­bling in­abil­i­ty to gain world dom­i­nance in crick­et for the last two decades.

So, to PM Row­ley—we had played crick­et to­geth­er in Irvine Hall, at our UWI, Mona stu­dent days in the 1970s — I ad­vise him to search for the Pat­ter­son Re­port, the Cari­com Re­view Pan­el on the Gov­er­nance of Crick­et re­port, and the many oth­er find­ings of var­i­ous re­gion­al com­mit­tees and the WICB, to get some an­swers to what he is now seek­ing.

But, in this sce­nario, I ask—to what avail? No­tably, PM Row­ley head­ed Cari­com for about six months in the past two years. I am sure that, if he is in­deed se­ri­ous about this mat­ter, he can bring it to the fore­front again at the next Cari­com meet­ing.

As a for­mer In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­eter, hav­ing played, in the 1970s, for T&T against Aus­tralia and the Com­bined Is­lands; for Ja­maica against To­ba­go; and the UWI Com­bined team against Aus­tralia and New Zealand, I my­self be­lieve that there needs to be a ma­jor over­haul of West In­dies Crick­et man­age­ment. Fur­ther, many new poli­cies must be ur­gent­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, this will form the nu­cle­us of many in­tense, hard, and per­haps con­tro­ver­sial de­lib­er­a­tions and ul­ti­mate­ly, de­ci­sions, now and in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture. But go­ing be­yond the bound­ary here is the price we must be pre­pared to pay, if we are to res­cue this great game of crick­et for the present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of West In­di­ans.

For crick­et—glo­ri­ous crick­et— is in­deli­bly part of our very Caribbean char­ac­ter, cul­ture, her­itage and his­to­ry, such a beau­ti­ful, uni­fy­ing re­gion­al sport. I say, there­fore, with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion, that it is the com­mon de­sire of the Caribbean lead­ers and its peo­ple, to see the West In­dies re­turn to its glo­ry days of the 1980s, tru­ly one of the great­est times of our re­gion’s mod­ern his­to­ry.

I hold mem­o­ries of that amaz­ing pe­ri­od dear, and my wish is that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to come, will al­so live in a time when their beloved West In­dies crick­et team is her­ald­ed and feared as the proud, un­de­ni­able, un­beat­en, glob­al cham­pi­ons of crick­et.

Dr Tim Dhan­raj Gopeesingh,

For­mer In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­eter

On Sun­day 13 No­vem­ber 2022, Dr Row­ley shared his opin­ion on the state of West In­dies crick­et in a post on his Face­book page.  The fol­low­ing is the text of that opin­ion…

“OK.

Now that the T20 World Cup is over and the em­bar­rass­ing un­der­whelm­ing per­for­mance of West In­dies crick­et has been ex­posed in all its naked­ness, there is an ur­gent need for deep re­flec­tion.

What is it about us that af­ter demon­strat­ing our su­pe­ri­or play­ing skills in these colo­nial and post-colo­nial is­lands we can­not now find it with­in our pop­u­la­tions, the busi­ness, coach­ing and man­age­ment skills to halt the de­cline of an ac­tiv­i­ty where we dom­i­nat­ed the world for a record-break­ing al­most two decades?

We must stop fran­chis­ing out our lega­cy and our fu­ture! We need vi­sion­ary and com­pe­tent man­age­ment both on and off the field!

We must look for our re­quire­ments with­in us and we must em­brace and al­low our world-beat­ing ex-play­ers to play a huge­ly mean­ing­ful role across all bound­aries with­in the re­gion. We need that now!

First­ly, and once again, we must set­tle and an­swer the ques­tion of ” Who owns West In­dies crick­et?” 

It can­not and must not be that this price­less lega­cy of an en­tire peo­ple is sim­ply avail­able to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ty and a good salary to a few in man­age­ment and some trav­el­ling six hit­ters who might be do­ing well per­son­al­ly even as the game is with­er­ing and dy­ing re­gion­al­ly.

Enough is enough! If Namib­ia, Hol­land, Ire­land, Zim­bab­we, Namib­ia, and Afghanistan can get it done then Crick­et West In­dies has a lot to an­swer for.

There must be con­se­quences and a new plan for new ini­tia­tives. Now! Dr. Kei­th Mitchell, where are you?”