Those afraid of the proposed Cricket Administration Bill will be the only ones opposing it

“I AM encouraged by the fact that the CAB (Cricket Administration Bill) seeks to bring transparency, honesty, and accountability to the administration of the game.” That is how Guyana and West Indies cricket icon Clive Lloyd recently described the unanimous passage of the Cricket Administration Bill in the National Assembly, where the APNU and the PPP/C voted in support of its passage.

“The AFC’s position has now been wholly vindicated. The blacklisting of Guyana by the WICB is totally a result of the Guyana Government.” This is who the AFC chose to blame for the passage of the Bill, and as a result the decision by the WICB to remove the New Zealand test match from Guyana. There was not one mention by the AFC of the APNU’s decision to support the Bill for it to have been passed. When one is not ready to be honest with the facts, it points to a motive.

It is public knowledge that the Corporate Marketing and Public Relations Manager of the WICB, Mr. Imran Khan, has been a public and vociferous supporter of the AFC. He staunchly campaigned for the Party on the social media during the last elections while being employed by the WICB, and had launched several nasty attacks against PPP/C Government Ministers, including referring to the ethnicity of a certain minister is a derogatory manner.

Yet the WICB, in its press releases — which are presumably written by the very Mr. Khan — informs us that it is staunchly against any form of political interference or bias in the administration of cricket.

It does not end there. We are informed that the very Mr. Khan, along with two other officials from the WICB, was present to observe the Guyana Cricket Board election of officials, which has been dubbed illegal. This much has been revealed in a letter by cricket stakeholders in Guyana to the WICB President, Mr. Dave Cameron. The letter has stated, in part, that “the apparent collusion between the WICB and the illegal GCB regime has severely undermined cricket development in Guyana, to the extent that our cricket has been in chaos and confusion for over three (3) years.

“This collusion is evident in the fact that the WICB had sent three (3) observers (Imran Khan, Paul Slowe and Conde Riley) to the purported GCB elections held on 27 January, 2013 in an apparent charade to accept the results of those elections as quid pro quo for Guyana’s support for the re-election of Dr. Julian Hunte as President of the WICB.”

The letter, which was signed by Keith Foster, President of the Berbice Cricket Board; Bissondyal Singh, President of the East Coast Cricket Board; and Roger Harper, President of the Georgetown Cricket Association, had also contended that “…there does not exist a legitimate Guyana Cricket Board (GCB), as only one of the three (3) constituent member Boards of the GCB took part in the purported elections held in July 2011, and again in January 2013. The persons holding themselves as officers of the GCB have, for the past three (3) years, foisted themselves on the administration of cricket in Guyana, and the WICB had been advised accordingly.

“Those persons do not reflect the will nor do they represent the interest of the cricket stakeholders of Guyana at any level.”

It is important to note here that, in the disputed GCB elections, the Essequibo Cricket Board and a faction of a Demerara Cricket Board, led by Mr. Raj Singh, had participated. But, just like the GCB, concerns were also raised in the election process of the DCB faction, among them being that the High Court had issued an injunction, preventing such an election in the first instance. We are informed that of the two DCB factions — the other being led by Mr. Bissondyal Singh — the GCB had sought to recognize the Raj Singh faction “after receiving a report from a special committee mandated to investigate and recommend which faction should be recognised.”

It gets more interesting as we are also informed that “a legal opinion was also presented by committee member Andrew Pollard of the Law firm Hughes, Fields and Stoby.” For those not familiar, this is the law firm of AFC Chairman Mr. Nigel Hughes.

On this issue, the cricket stakeholders’ letter had noted that “…at the Demerara Cricket Board (DCB) level, Raj Singh, Anand Sanasie and persons unknown to the DCB constituent members have reportedly usurped the functions of a legitimate DCB executive. This is the first time since the formation of the DCB in 1991 that the major constituent members of the DCB – the East Coast Cricket Board (ECCB) and the Georgetown Cricket Association (GCA) – along with the Guyanese cricketing public, do not know who the executive members of the DCB are.

“The GCA and the ECCB wrote a letter to the WICB in February 2013 (copy attached) informing that there is no legitimate DCB, as a court order was issued prohibiting the holding of elections for the DCB. Further, that letter sought the intervention of the WICB to determine who were the persons holding themselves as executive members of the DCB, and who represented the DCB at the purported elections of the GCB on 27 January 2013. To date, there has been no reply.”

One would have expected that the AFC would have been at the heart of championing the cause of the cricket stakeholders, as the members of the party’s leadership had consistently sought to project themselves as the paragons of transparency and accountability in Guyana.

They should have been the first to support the Cricket Administration Bill, which sought to directly address issues of accountability in the functioning of the GCB, especially when one takes into consideration what obtains presently, as articulated in the cricket stakeholders’ letter. “The WICB has therefore been sending monies over the past three (3) years to an illegal GCB, and much of those remittances have been consumed in GCB legal fees. It is apposite to note that none of the monies has gone to those constituent members that make up ninety percent (90) of the strength of Guyana Cricket.

“Moreover, the assets of the DCB and the assets of the GCB have been illegally transferred to private individuals without the knowledge and authorization of the constituent members of those Boards, and ipso facto are no longer the property of those constituent members.”

Alas, it appears that the AFC, contrary to its earlier pronouncements, is only concerned about the interests of certain stakeholders above others, as it chose to lament in its release that a major contract for the Pegasus Hotel was cancelled in 2012 because the WICB had rejected the hosting of international cricket in Guyana, due to local efforts to ensure the game was properly administrated in the interest of all stakeholders.

As is public knowledge, the owner of the Pegasus Hotel is a financial backer of the AFC, but the party in its release continues its onslaught against the PPP/C Government by stating that “the Government’s insistence on interfering in the running of the game has forced the WICB to cancel the game that was scheduled to be played here. This is a dark time for cricket in Guyana…the controlling nature of the PPPC and (its) belief in autocracy (have) forced this dark day upon us.”

Old Kai recalls that this particular line of attack against the Government was addressed by a cricket stakeholder, Dowlat Samaroo, in a letter published in the media on January 13, 2013. In that instance, he was responding to identical claims being put forward by a key member of the embattled GCB.

“On the issue of Government’s interference in cricket, Sanasie must understand it cannot be termed “interference” if the Government is requested by cricket stakeholders to intervene when a crisis has evolved, especially in financial management.”

In the end, the WICB, rather than trying to understand the concerns of 90% of cricket stakeholders in Guyana, has decided to side with the 10%. It also appears that the WICB feels comfortable with interfering in the internal politics of a nation, as it has done in directly lobbying the National Assembly and issuing the President of Guyana with an ultimatum, but it abhors when these very stakeholders seek to improve the integrity of this sport in their country.

Their decision to remove the New Zealand test from Guyana may indeed prove a blessing in disguise, as for far too long they have not only sought to send low-level teams to this country while saving the bigger names for certain members, but have also decided to set a test match during a traditional wet season for this country.