The International Cricket Council (ICC) has snubbed CARICOM’s Prime Ministerial Sub-committee’s request for a meeting in London next month but says it was open to discussions in the future once Cricket West Indies president Dave Cameron is present.
Chief executive of cricket’s governing body, Dave Richardson, told the sub-committee’s chairman, St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, that such a meeting would not be possible at the suggested time because the ICC will be holding its quarterly board meetings in Kolkata from April 21 to 26.
The sub-committee had proposed a meeting with the ICC during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in London from April 18 to 20.
Convenient date
Speaking on behalf of ICC chairman Shashank Manohar, Richardson said that while the body was open to a meeting with CARICOM at a “convenient date”, such a meeting would only take place once Cameron was involved.
“Mr Manohar is amenable to a meeting with the [prime ministers] at a convenient date but since Cricket West Indies is our member, he is firmly of the view that the meeting should not take place without the attendance of the chairman of the Cricket West Indies Board, Mr Cameron,” the Trinidad Guardian newspaper quoted Richardson as saying in a letter.
That letter was also copied to the prime ministers of Barbados [Freundel Stuart], Jamaica [Andrew Holness] and Trinidad and Tobago [Dr Keith Rowley].
Noting that their offices are in Dubai and Manohar is based in Nagpur, India, the ICC said the proposal to meet in London “will unfortunately not be possible, especially since we are holding our quarterly board and committee meetings in Kolkata from April 21 to 26.
Blow
“As you may be aware, the ICC is staging an ICC Women’s World T20 in the Caribbean in November this year. In the absence of an alternative, this may provide a more convenient opportunity to meet.”
The ICC response comes as a blow to the prime ministers’ “desperate urgency” to discuss the much debated matter of the restructuring of CWI’s governance, which has seen a contentious back-and-forth between CARICOM and the regional cricket board over the last two and a half years.
A CARICOM-commissioned Governance Report branded the CWI structure “antiquated, obsolete and anachronistic”, and recommended its “immediate dissolution … and the appointment of an interim board.” CWI categorically rejected the report’s findings and recommendations.
At last month’s two-day intersessional in Haiti, CARICOM adopted legal advice which confirmed they could challenge CWI’s right, as a private entity, managing the public good of West Indies cricket. (CMC)
