PM Shares Thoughts on Cricket

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Cricket

Monday, 12 March 2012 02:30

By Antigua news

Antigua St John's - Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer has shared his statements on the governance of cricket at the national, regional, and international levels, presented during his address at the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Cricket.

He was speaking during the inter-sessional meeting of the conference being held in Suriname.

His remarks are reprinted below.

Conference should take stock of the work done by the PMSCC at its last two meetings, in Trinidad and Tobago on 12 September 2011 and by video-conference on 6 January this year.

A number of questions were posed in those meetings about the organisation and administration of cricket in the Region, against the backdrop of the sentiment that cricket is the preserve of no one group of persons, but rather that it belongs to the people of the Region. This fact was clearly reiterated at the Seventeenth Meeting of the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee last September.  

Questions such as the authority of the West Indies Cricket Board WICB  to function in sovereign states, the governance arrangements in the Territorial Boards, and the examination of the arrangements in other international cricket boards - all these touch and concern the issues of the Governance of West Indies Cricket.

In a situation where the International Cricket Council (ICC) is rolling out new guidelines for the organisation and good governance of cricket internationally among its members that is, the respective boards in cricketing nations - those rules should cascade down to apply within the respective membership of these boards hence the WICB must instil similar standards within its 6 Territorial Boards.

We cannot have this conversation without asking what has been the fate of the Patterson Report on the Governance of West Indies Cricket?  How much of the recommendations have been followed? And why were the proposals for changing the administrative structure in other words the governance arrangements of the WICB not implemented?

The acrimony between the WICB and the West Indies Players Association WIPA is having a deleterious effect on the environment in which the players have to function to ply their trade, with a constant battle being played out in arbitration proceedings and latterly in the Courts of Trinidad and Tobago.  

More recently, the Government of Guyana and the Hon. Prime Minister of Jamaica have had disagreements with the WICB.  We will no doubt hear first hand from His Excellency President Donald Ramotar and the Most Honourable Portia Simpson Miller about these thorny issues.    


Given the socio-economic importance of cricket to the Member States, Governments must have a legitimate interest in the developmental aspects of the game.

The Conference should mandate the PMSCC to engage with all relevant parties and other stakeholders on matters related to the governance and development of cricket in the Region.

It is recommended that the PMSCC on cricket should meet by the end of the month to bring a speedy resolution to the Gale issue.

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