IT IS my understanding that the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) will be holding its Annual General Meeting on March 7, 2015 and directors Joel Garner and Baldath Mahabir will be challenging to unseat the incumbent president Dave Cameron and vice-president Emanuel Nanthan respectively.This is not surprising; for president Cameron has been a WICB director for approximately 10 years including the post of vice-president from 2007 to 2013, and president from 2013 to date. During his two years’ reign as president, he displayed a high level of immaturity and incompetence never before demonstrated by any of his predecessors and exhibited a remarkable ability to make decisions that are not in the best interest of West Indies Cricket. According to Proverbs 29 Verse 18, “where there is no vision, the people perish” Mr Cameron fulfils this scripture absolutely. His many failures include:

The firing of coach Gibson without proper thought to his replacement and assigning coaching responsibilities to Sir Richie Richardson, Curtly Ambrose and Stuart Williams, all of whom did not even coach the Leewards teams.
In any case, Richie Richardson is the manager of the WI team whilst Stuart Williams as the asst. coach does not seem to be favoured by the WICB for the post of head coach. It was expected that during that period the WICB would have been thinking in terms of the composition of the World Cup team, the captain, leadership etc.
2. The hiring of a Director of Cricket who seems lost in the maze of islands and Guyana that make up the West Indies, and after two full years still has not visited many of the territories (including Guyana) in order to properly assess their needs and formulate a proper cricket development programme. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that WI Cricket development must not only focus on the performance of the Senior WI cricket team, but also on the type and quality of cricket development processes starting from the bottom, the grassroots. In this regard there should be the- :
(a) Establishing of a reliable school cricket progamme throughout the WI.
(b) Strengthening the club cricket structure administratively and technologically – ensuring that appropriate infrastructure is in place.
(c) Intensifying the domestic and regional tournaments.
(d) The institution of satellite Cricket Academies in each of the six territories and restoration of the now defunct High Performance Centre (HPC) in Barbados.
3. Establishing a Coaching Committee that visits each territory in order to design a comprehensive coaching programme that is suitable and sustainable for each territory and consistent with the WICB overall coaching programme so that when players progress to the Test level they are better prepared.
4. The Professional League/Franchise tournament has been poorly instituted with the WICB losing a golden opportunity to rake in the funds required to execute most if not all development needs, particularly when Mr Garner is now saying that the WICB is bankrupt.
1. So what was the interest and expectations of WICB in this venture?
2. Where are the funds received from the franchise/professional league and the total capitulation to the ICC (India, England & Australia) takeover of international cricket? The amounts and utilisation of these funds seem to be a well-guarded secret which must now be divulged.
3. The ignoring of the ongoing Guyana cricket problems must be the most sinful and shameful act of Mr Cameron and his seventeen (17) directors together with the unprecedented deterioration of the standard of cricket in Leewards, Windwards and Guyana specifically, and Trinidad/Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados generally.
The situation is so grim that Guyana have won the 2014 U-15, U-19 and Senior competitions consistently beating all the other teams but yet cannot have a single player on the WI World Cup Team.
Chairman of Selectors Clive Lloyd stated that Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard were omitted from the World Cup side basically because of poor form but he and his panel failed to recognise the current form of Veerasammy Permaul, Devendra Bishoo and Narsingh Deonarine even in the replacement of injured WI players. I am wondering if in considering young Jason Holder for the captaincy of the WI World Cup team Clive Lloyd’s selection panel remembered that Permaul was twenty-three (23) years old, captained the Guyana Seniors, the WI ‘A’ Team and represented the WI Senior Team? I am also wondering if our self-imposed directors to the WICB had questioned the Selectors’ recommendation for it is the known policy that Selectors recommend to WICB meetings and the Board appoints/confirms.
The buck stops at the Board and its leadership. It is my considered view that Clive Lloyd should have been made President of the WICB or Director of Cricket of the WICB where his experience, expertise and vast influence could have been better utilised, rather than as Chairman of Selectors where he could only select from what the pool produces.
Any Board president worth his salt must question such recommendations especially when the person recommended is young, inexperienced, cannot command a place in the team and leads a group consisting of senior players participating in a high level international tournament and with three (3) former captains in that team.
It is my firm belief that the entire plot was implemented by the WICB based on a determination to penalise Bravo and Pollard more than any concern for West Indies Cricket. While I have no problem with the WICB embracing a new order and enforcing discipline, I think that timing is important and a fair and structured plan must be the basis for any action, not vengeance nor malice. After all, the impact their decisions will have on the players themselves must be considered.
Within the framework of such obvious inefficiencies along with the president’s recent tweet and retweeting on retirement packages for his players we find that Guyana, Leewards and Windwards – the current minnows of WI cricket, the territories that have suffered most from the ineffectiveness of Dave Cameron’s poor leadership, are the ones that now seek to re-elect him Kudos to Trinidad, Barbados and
Jamaica, at least the executive bodies, who worked with Cameron for the past two (2) years have not seen it fit to commit to his re-election. This is more important when one recognises that it was Jamaica who nominated Cameron and Trinidad that seconded him in 2013 elections. Guyana and Barbados in 2013 supported Dr Hunte. Yet today despite all Cameron’s wrongdoings Guyana’s self-imposed directors (who do not have the support of the majority of the members) have decided to vote for “gross inefficiency” instead of a “hopeful change”. One must ask the question – Why? Is it because the self-imposed Guyanese directors are clueless on cricket matters and could care less about the state of Guyana Cricket and West Indies Cricket?
We are indeed in a bad way when the eighteen (18) persons in charge of Regional Cricket cannot come together and make decisions in the best interest of our cricket, but prefer to allow greed, corruption and incestuous practices to take over our beloved game. The very WICB insists that players must represent West Indies with pride but they themselves do not manage West Indies Cricket with pride.
I suggest that they indulge in some serious introspection, and I am extremely concerned that if Mr Cameron is returned as president, our cricket will continue its downward slide. There is nothing in his ten-year sojourn at the top of our cricket administration to suggest otherwise. Proverb 29:12 states that “if a ruler hearken to lies all of his servants are wicked”.
Meanwhile, we will have to pay forty-two million dollars (US$42M) to India and simultaneously lose the friendly relations that have always existed between India and the West Indies.
And in the not-too-distant future, WI Cricket will dive further into the Abyss of Doom and be among the minnows of international cricket where even Ireland, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan will all rise above West Indies.
Mr Cameron and those who support him care not for WI Cricket. No amount of money they have received seems enough and for them cricket development is to “talk about” but not “execute” particularly since, according to Cameron, the cricket belongs to them and they cannot be moved.

(Letter to the Sports Editor)
Claude Raphael
Former WICB Director