Vaneisa Baksh and QPCC Membership

(Trinidad Guardian)

Vaneisa Baksh?s application for membership seven years ago was the catalyst that caused the vote to allow women as members of Queen?s Park Cricket Club (QPCC). She said she was overjoyed about that, but it would all seem so pointless if there would be a three-year waiting period before it became a fact, rather than merely a successful vote.

She noted that there are mechanisms in place to fast track membership for certain types of applicants, and it would be an ideal opportunity for Queen?s Park to fast track some applicants who have been waiting for some time.

Baksh, a 38-years-old freelance journalist, the local correspondent of Wisden, is a Petit Bourg born and bred girl who was smitten by cricket from her earliest youth.

She reminisced, ?I was one of the children of five families who were related and lived on the same street, near to the Aranguez Savannah. We played at every opportunity. We went to the Savannah each day as soon as school was over and played till it was dark.?

She said she loved the game, but at that time there was no schools cricket for girls. So she did not continue.

She is now one of the directors of a subsidiary of the WICB, CWCWI 2007 Inc., formed to prepare for all aspects of staging the World Cup in 2007 in the Caribbean.

Asked how or why did she apply for membership, she replied that she was interviewing the deceased president, Gerry Gomez, while preparing an article about the club and he told her that ?no woman had had the temerity to apply before? and asked her why did she not.

She said that she thought about it and later she did apply. She was driven by the feeling that it was desirable to be a member of the club and there was no reason why women should not be members of a club that promoted international events for the country and the region.

Baksh?s quest was aided by the fact that she was a media person. It received attention, and her first application, proposed and seconded by prominent attorneys, Desmond Allum and Gregory Delzin, was turned down.

That, too, received wide media coverage and discussion that helped to form opinion, one way or the other, until what can now be seen as the will of the majority of the membership.

Allum said he was not surprised at the first failure at the ballot, but felt a large section of the club had no real objection, or even strong opinion, about the matter and that only a small, vociferous section carried on about it.

?It was only a matter of time before it would be accepted, and the time has arrived,? he said.

It has coincided with the development throughout the sporting fraternity. Even the hide-bound, traditionally male MCC has opened its membership to women.

Discrimination, whether against race, sex, creed or class, has been on the hit list of the members of ICC and WICB. The WICB has now joined the others in the region and internationally, in that there is now just a WICB for cricket in the region and no longer a Women?s WICB.

The time was ripe for QPCC to get in step with the other major international sporting organisations and have members, not male or female members.

President Rodriguez is satisfied with the situation and it only remains now for the structural adjustments and additions to be made, before the introduction and comfortable accommodation of female members would be complete.