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The carnival season is upon us and Cricket West Indies (CWI) now seems to have jumped headfirst into the festivities with their own version of the bacchanal, which has been unfolding steadily with each passing day.
A President not seeking re-election, his Vice President intends to run as his replacement, with insider rumors circulating that the soon-to-expire CEO’s contract was secretly extended for another two years, officially denying as much as soon as they had surfaced.
These were the highlights of the unfolding events of the past seven days that have marked what has only been the second week of the New Year 2023!
Ricky Skerritt’s reported announcement of his intentions not to seek re-election as CWI President when the governing body holds its 2023 Annual General Meeting next March has been widely anticipated.
Skerritt’s announcement was expected to follow the resignation of Phil Simmons from his position as West Indies men’s cricket coach, which had come as a direct result of the West Indies 2022 T20 World Cup participation disaster.
The West Indies T20 World Cup fiasco was just the latest sad saga of Skerritt’s four-year tenure as CWI president, which after promising so much had proved to be a monumental disappointment. As President, Skerritt simply failed to deliver significantly on most of his many promised initiatives which were supposedly geared towards arresting the steady decline of West Indies cricket.
Instead, as the T20 World Cup embarrassment showed, the statue of the West Indies in its supposedly strongest format has fallen even further. The West Indies’ October 2022 World Cup fiasco was also quickly followed just weeks later by the embarrassment of back-to-back massive Test defeats to their hosts Austria in the two-match Series played Down Under. The second Test losing margin became the largest ever recorded by the West Indies team in its now ninety-five-year history of participation in the highest format of cricket.
Even more embarrassment now seems on the horizon. It is becoming increasingly likely that the West Indies will not qualify directly for this year’s ODI World Cup hosted by India as one of the ICC’s top eight teams. West Indies’ potential exit from the automatic qualifying group will result in the team taking part in the qualifying tournament hosted in Zimbabwe next July.
The Zimbabwe qualifier will determine the final four participants for the 2023 World Cup hosted by India. However, faltering at the same stage during last year’s T20 World Cup, who is to say that history will not repeat itself in the form of an identical West Indies disaster?
During the past week, the case of possible doubling of the deficits of the presidential administration of Skerritt CWI also made its presence known. Several reports circulated about Dr Kishore Shallow, who as Skerritt’s Vice President was a major player in all the apparent shortcomings of the administration often going so far as to act as its public spokesperson, overwhelmingly signaling its intentions. his to be a presidential candidate. in the CWI elections in March this year.
Dr Shallow has since publicly stated that he is now still “considering his options”. However, the mere suggestion of his CWI presidential candidacy is already being seen in Caribbean cricket circles as an outspoken affront to West Indies cricket and its fans. It is said to be coming as it is from an individual who now still holds the position of Vice President, second in command, in perhaps his worst presidential administration ever.
It was the same Dr Shallow who, publicly acknowledging the global television portrayal of the embarrassment caused by the Tepegate fiasco, had vowed to take up the matter personally and rectify it in due course. Tapegate had featured West Indies players appearing in globally televised international matches in team jerseys with a former sponsor’s logo covered in masking tape.
Sandals’ title sponsorship of West Indies cricket officially expired in July 2020. Corporate Standard Operating Procedures and Practices dictate at least three months’ notice of intentions not to renew or extend a Contractual Agreement. Therefore, CWI would know from March 2020 that its team shirts with the sandals logo would have to be replaced. Yet incredibly, the infamous Tapegate saga lasted from September 2021 to the following February 2022!
Dr Shallow’s desperate public excuse for the occurrence of Tapegate was that it was caused by transport delays stimulated by COVID. And despite his demonstrated failure to immediately rectify the matter as promised, the same Dr Shallow is now somehow said to still feel justified in presenting himself as the most suitable person to be the next President of the CWI! Seriously?
If that’s not enough of a charade, CWI’s bacchanal was made even more frenzied by reports circulating with inside sources that the organization’s soon-to-expire CEO Johnny Grave’s contract had been secretly extended for another two years . Such rumours, however, were just as quickly and effectively suppressed publicly by Dr Shallow himself.
Unfortunately for Johnny Grave, however, the rumors now circulating will likely serve to bring even greater public scrutiny to the merits, or lack thereof, of his continued tenure as CEO of CWI. Apart from Simmons, Skerritt, and by association Shallow, Graves’ name has also been high on the list of those whose heads should roll as a direct result of the West Indies 2022 T20 World Cup debacle.
Asked directly if he would indeed be among those handing in their resignations over the T20 World Cup fiasco, Grave had publicly stated emphatically that he had absolutely no intention of doing so. This just minutes after he had also admitted that everyone within the CWI must accept responsibility for the World Cup debacle.
Grave had also indicated that his contract with CWI would expire this year and as such, it will be up to the next administration to determine whether or not he should continue in his current role. However, noticeably since the outcry over the departure of CWI heads over the T20 World Cup fiasco began, there has been a flurry of public announcements from Women. They have included indications of his intentions to personally implement the recommendations of the three-member Brian Lara-Mickey Arthur-Justice Patrick Thompson Committee, which was tasked by the CWI led by President Skerritt to undertake a thorough and comprehensive review of West Indies team. 2022 T20 World Cup Performance.
Such recommendations, when finally made, will certainly take months to implement if at all. Women’s public suggestion that he would still be around as CEO to oversee their implementation was, therefore, if not borderline contemptuous, at least completely at odds with the actions of an individual who was even remotely concerned about continuing the contract. his work. !
Recently, Grave has gone even further. His announcement last month of a new and exciting 2023 Regional Four-Day Tour was followed just last week by a Trinidad & Tobago Daily Express article which boldly featured him outlining his 2023 to-do list. of which was his statement of the CWI’s plans to present its Academies as the key component of a “robust programme” which is now supposed to miraculously cure West Indies cricket of all its ills, restoring its fortunes her in her long lost ex. glory.
As former West Indies Test batsman, now respected cricket journalist, Bryan Davis recently pointed out in his widely read column in the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday “players are the end product of a cricket organisation, be it club or country and their performance on the playing field, whether good, bad or indifferent is very representative of the strength, mediocrity or weakness of that organization!”
If that is indeed the case, the inescapable related reality is how CEO Johnny Grave has been in charge of CWI’s administrative responsibilities for the past five to six years since his 2017 appointment to the position. During that time, as mentioned earlier, the fortunes of West Indies cricket have declined even further!
The most important question to ask now about West Indies cricket administration, however, is why the responsibility for its most powerful and influential tasks has been placed in the hands of an outsider. How many of the other twelve ICC test members have also given their CEO responsibilities to a non-citizen? Even more importantly, surely among the seven million plus nationals of our Caribbean region and nearly as many of identical heritage residing overseas in the diaspora, there must be a single individual, male or female, capable of fulfilling the role. of CEO for our cricket. with greater efficiency and appreciation of its importance to our society?
Out with the old, in with the new!
About The Writer: Guyana-born, Toronto-based Tony McWatt is the publisher of WI Wickets and Wickets/online cricket monthly magazines aimed at Caribbean and Canadian readers respectively. He is also the only son of former Guyana and West Indies wicketkeeper-batsman, the late Clifford “Baby Boy” McWatt.
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