Straining Credibility
Mon, Sep 11, '06
A month ago at a press conference in Kingston, the president of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), Ken Gordon, reporting on his first year in office, announced that the Board's focus had been on "building its credibility."
It fit neatly with his statements at the beginning of his term that the WICB was committed to a new transparency. Transparency leads to credibility, which leads to trust.
His transparent comments in 2005 were associated with the WICB decision to publish what it determined to be "relevant parts" of the report by a committee headed by Justice Anthony Lucky to investigate the Board's negotiations with rival telecommunications firms, Cable & Wireless and Digicel.
The WICB lost control over what would be "relevant" public information when the entire report was leaked and published.
Despite the stated commitment to transparency, Gordon advised the public that although the Board "recognised the need" for transparency, "they didn't have to do this," and he asked that they be given "full marks for the initiative."
At the Kingston conference, he announced that seven of eight Board objectives had been met: the outstanding one being the appointment of a CEO, which was to have been done by September 1.
The seven accomplishments were acting on the Lucky Report, settling contract issues with the West Indies Players' Association, restructuring the Board and its secretariat, engaging Caribbean governments, establishing retainer contracts and fixing the Board's finances.
As accomplishments go, that is not a bad record on paper. But has it built credibility and earned trust? Have the processes been transparent?
The Lucky Report was essentially ignored amidst a heap of questions as to its validity and binding effects.
The contract issues with WIPA have recently been announced as settled. But last October, nearly a year ago, the same kind of announcement was made. That one preceded the tour of Australia and had remained subject to negotiating the contentious Clause 5 with the mediation of the ICC and FICA. That dispute went on for a year as well, threatening the VB series and sending a second-string team to Sri Lanka while captains were switched around.
So when last week's announcement came that the WICB and WIPA have signed a Collective Bargaining Agreement, a Code of Conduct and a Memorandum of Understanding, one could be forgiven for not taking these as meaningful signs.
Demonstrating 'devotion' to transparency, a key component of this agreement is that: "both parties further commit themselves to resort to public statements on controversial issues only after every reasonable effort has been made to resolve differences internally."
No one likes the unseemly bickering between the WICB and WIPA that has characterised negotiations, but its ugly nature is rooted in the misrepresentations and reneged agreements that have led to the acknowledged state of "conflict and controversy" between them. Agreeing to build a public image as a happy family sounds like the kind of front we see where everything is hunky-dory until somebody leaks something or some frustrated party begins to ventilate in public.
There's evidence all round. Dinanath Ramnarine is the most consistent, but over the last year there was Brian Lara exploding about selection issues; Allen Stanford exploding over his Super Star match, and Michael Holding expressing great disbelief.
On Board restructuring, and the still unnamed CEO, don't forget that in January, when Allen Stanford said he had been asked to advise the Board's finance committee, especially to help reduce its more than US$20 million debt, the then CEO, Roger Brathwaite could only say that "Those details were not shared with me so I am not in a position to comment."
Brathwaite resigned a couple of months later. A tough job.
Building credibility and trust is one thing, but divisions have been enormous; the latest being Stanford Legends seeming to be forced to take sides against other cricketers.
And if you break down as fast as you build, at the end of the day you'll still have nothing.
* This column is republished with permission from the NATION newspaper in Barbados where it first appeared.