I attended the Nation Publishing Co. Ltd’s Talkback meeting on the topic How do we transform sports in Barbados from the amateur status to professional level?
I am a cricket pundit. My question to panellist Conde Riley, first vice-president of the Barbados Cricket Association, was: “Would it not be more prudent to reconfigure Barbados’ premier competition with an inter-parish set-up instead of the cosmetic name change from Division 1 to Elite Division?”
Barbados’ cricket, once the envy of the cricket world with its players commanding a number of the cemented places in the West Indies cricket team, has plunged from that pinnacle to the pit, just like the Barbados players’ representation.
The West Indies team which won the 2012 ICC World Twenty20 did not have one Barbadian in the final.
In the recent Champions Trophy, West Indies barely missed (by one run on the Duckworth/Lewis method) a semi-final spot, and again not one Barbadian was in that match – notwithstanding that the Combined Campuses and Colleges team based here in Barbados has a majority of Barbadian players in it.
Where do we go from here?
Cricket is the one sport played in Barbados that is capable of moving to a professional set up instantaneously, if our administrators were perceptible, since a new structure for Barbados cricket was around since 1998.
Coincidentally, it was the very Nation Publishing Co. Ltd, during its 25th anniversary celebrations in 1998, that implemented the novel inter-parish championship with winners St Philip collecting $10 000 and the trophy after defeating St James in the final.
Since then, the National Sports Council has held a tapeball competition and over the past five years the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies has adopted the parish format.
In 1933, by parliamentary decree, the BCA was vested with the authority for the administration of cricket and the Barbados Cricket League (BCL) played a significant part in the Barbados and, by extension, West Indies team in the international arena.
However, during the plunge, the BCA administrators’ Division 1/Elite Division profiling could be the root of Barbados cricket demise.
It is therefore incumbent on Minister of Sport Stephen Lashley to advance a repeal of the 1933 act and have a Barbados Cricket Board (BCB) which inevitably amalgamates the BCA and the BCL.
Hence players like the current Barbados captain Kirk Edwards, Pedro Collins, Fidel Edwards and Corey Collymore – all residents of St Peter – would not have to leave one end of the island and travel to the other end to be considered, by playing in the Elite competition teams, for Barbados selection.
And that is where we go from here.
• Jeff Layne is a cricket enthusiast.