Latest update June 8th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 27, 2023 Sports
Kaieteur Sports – The sport of cricket has been transformed via Twenty20 leagues due to the Indian billionaire’s ownership of Indian Premier League (IPL) teams. In 2023 IPL TV broadcast rights are second in Global sports leagues to only the NFL and better than the NBA and English Premier League (EPL).
However, while West Indies cricket has struggled to keep pace with this phenomenon & everyone in the Caribbean aiming their guns at Cricket West Indies, the territorial board’s role in this demise often gets forgotten. Undoubtedly no national board has more dysfunction than the Guyana Cricket Board.
After Chetram Singh who had been president of the GCB for around 19 years, announced that he was no longer willing to continue in the position in 2011, all hell broke loose as key players jockeyed for pole position to be the next president of the GCB, thus commencing the breakdown of Guyana’s Cricket ecosystem.
It took 10 years after a litany of court cases battles for the extremely unpopular and controversial tenure (to put it mildly) of Anand Sanasie who took control of local cricket despite never never officially being president, to be removed. The end of his presence in both Guyana cricket and Cricket West Indies director’s boardroom made everyone breathe a massive sigh of relief.
Modern GCB
One of the great regrets of the 2021 CWI election and the cricket politics that led to Sanasie being removed, was that it got entangled in the GCB saga that most people in the Caribbean don’t either understand or care about.
Bissondyal Singh may have been deeply part of the decade-long opposition of many Guyana cricket officials seeking free and fair election – but it’s clear now he was the wrong person from that group to have been elevated into the presidency.
Ideally, Guyana should have a had election for the president but because of another complicated court process and government intervention via the sports ministry, Singh was “selected” instead of “elected”
The first highly questionable move of his tenure was the very suspicious reasons to remove Hilbert Foster as GCB vice president and CWI Director, due to spurious insinuations that the Berbice Cricket Board financial statements could not stand up to scrutiny.
I can safely tell the Guyana cricket public based on my time in Cricket West Indies as a communications officer many in CWI were surprised to see Foster removed.
West Indies have a broken player selection system that fans, media and the public no longer have faith that the best players can consistently get picked.
At all levels in recent years Berbice has produced the majority of Guyana’s cricketers that have represented West Indies. Surely then the West Indies cricket directorship should have a man like Foster based on his administrative success record on the inside?
Similar to deserving players who don’t get picked for West Indies for non-cricket reasons due a cacophony of political factors – Foster is the boardroom example.
2023 CWI election fallout
The noise Singh & GCB have made about the recent CWI election which led to St.Vincent’s Dr.Kishore Shallow becoming president and Trinidad & Tobago’s Azim Bassarath Vice-President has been a joke.
While Singh was busy calling for the removal
Bassrath as vice-president claimed he was elected in a “flawed and illegal” manner – President Shallow was getting the Guyana Government to pledge Support to West Indies cricket.
To quote President Irfan Ali: “We are also working with President Dr. Shallow and Cricket West Indies on advancing some innovative ideas in bringing more opportunities to our cricket players and spectators in the Region. I strongly believe that defining our product as distinct from other regions and countries is critical in the rebranding and repositioning of CWI globally.”
Is Singh and GCB comfortable with President Ali pledging support to CWI who according to them has a vice-president that was elected in a “flawed and illegal” manner ?
Anyone who has paid keen enough attention to West Indies elections this millennium would know that to become CWI president you have to be skilled in cricket and build relationships with CARICOM leaders. That moment Dr. Shallow comically showed Singh up as a novice cricket administrator.
So while GCB continues to falter along, all leadership and innovative Guyana cricket initiatives are coming from the head of state. Whether it be a commitment to support CWI, the cricket carnival idea around CPL or the construction of new cricket grounds in Berbice and Essequibo.
Whoever is advising President Ali on cricket should probably go down to Bourda and give the GCB some ideas.
The GCB hasn’t had a public campaign election free of court and political maneuvering in my time in sports media & I’m not even sure when Chetram Singh was in charge in the early 1990s – what process led to him becoming president.
Therefore the democratic sports process means Guyana’s cricket needs the GCB President to be elected after a robust non-outside interference process where a person can campaign on a vision for Guyana cricket & earn the vote of members in the three counties, while the public gets to assess their campaign. All CWI presidents and board directors from other islands go through this process – why must the GCB continue to be the embarrassing outlier?
(Colin Benjamin was a Cricket West Indies communications officer from 2019-2023. He has covered West Indies cricket for more than a decade for other global and Caribbean publications.)
Show the proof Jagdeo
Jun 08, 2024
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