We Must Demand Transparency From WICB

(Trinidad Guardian)

Now, more than ever, with a young team in reconstruction and showing the benefit of having a coach and a captain who recognise what is most needed to blossom, with the World Cup demanding first world efficiency and organisation, the West Indies Cricket Board must be effectively and efficiently run.

It must do everything possible to prepare the best team and to put on a show that will redound to the good name of West Indies.

The ill wind that forced the Rev Wes Hall to demit office, has inadvertently exposed the arrogant self-serving and incompetence that has taken place during his term of office.

The transparency and accountability he promised remained a figment of our collective imagination. It was business as usual.

The executive arm of the board has powers far in excess of what an executive board should. A case in point was the appointment of a chief executive officer. When reminded that the board had decided that the position should be advertised, the president explained that a decision had already been taken by the executive committee to offer the position without advertising it.

The members of the WICB?s Cricket Committee have a combined experience of 256 Test matches and 382 ODI?s among them. Yet every recommendation they made in the last two years was dumped by the executive.

They obviously regard West Indies cricket as their fief and exercise direct power over the board and management.

They intend to protect those interests, to preserve the power to appoint every staff position if necessary, from ceo, executives and even personal assistants. They jealously protect the power to make decisions about appointments on all teams - managers, coaches, physios and all matters.

They control the power to decide where Tests will be played, who will have ODI?s, who will have World Cup matches in 2007 and who travels on board business.

Most insidiously, they decide what is communicated to the public, who will be the next president and vice president and who will be on the next executive committee.

They have contravened the articles of the WICB and often acted in a manner unacceptable even to the placid backbenchers in the WICB who have, at last, decided to stand up.

The major faux pas in attempting to foist a president, who could not properly function, on the populace was a Godsend.

Coming after announcing Bennett King as coach when he had neither discussed the job requirements nor accepted, was the shock that woke up the cricket fraternity to the near hijack of West Indies cricket.

Even as the election for the presidency is still to come, the hustlers have gone ahead with the election of a vice-president, without knowing who will be the president. What is the rush? How can the executive be so sure that the new president will be able to work with the elected vice-president?

The West Indies Cricket Board owes it to the Caribbean people to inform us of the policy under which they operate, of the decisions they make on our behalf and at our cost. Each individual territory owes it to the cricket fraternity to inform them of the workings of the WICB, especially at a time when development is the main concern.

All the stakeholders in WICB must stand up and demand, from the WICB and the individual boards, an account of their efforts on our behalf.

That is the only way forward to a progressive and competitive West Indies Cricket future.

* This column first appeared in the Trinidad Guardian newspaper.