Recalcitrant WICB

After five years of a sustained rearguard action to ward off any meaningful changes in its structure proposed by the “Patterson Report”, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has once again demonstrated its contempt for the intelligence of the West Indian people. The Patterson (Governance) Report had been commissioned by then head of the WICB, Ken Gordon “to consider the composition and structure of the WICB and to make recommendations which will improve its overall operations, governance effectiveness, team performance and strengthen its credibility and public support.”
Two years later (2009) WICB president Dr Julian Hunte unctuously asserted that while the recommendations were not “edicts or directives”, forty-seven of the sixty-five had been implemented. PJ Paterson, the former PM of Jamaica, however, rejected any notion of meaningful changes: “It is erroneous to pretend or attempt to portray the notion that the WICB has accepted and is proceeding in accordance with the Report submitted by Sir Alister McIntyre, Dr. Ian McDonald and myself.
“The proper litmus test must measure the qualitative changes which have been approved and not the proportion of recommendations which have been accepted in order to determine whether or not the raison d’etre for commissioning the Report has been satisfied. I challenge anyone to point out a single iota or even the semblance of change which has been made to the composition and structure of the WICB as a result of our Report.”
In terms of the ‘composition and structure’ of the WICB, the Report had recommended its replacement by a two-tier structure: a General Council (GC) and an Executive Cricket Board (ECB) answerable to the General Council. The GC would be a representative body of 15-18  persons comprised of stakeholders such as former players, CARICOM, tourism, private sector/finance/marketing/  investment, higher education, media, and arts/culture. The Council would meet once/twice a year with responsibility for strategic planning and general oversight.   The General Council should have a Chairman, a person of considerable regional respect and prestige.
The ECB would have no more than ten members, (ex-officios not included), answerable to the GC.  Formal reporting structures would be established to ensure that this was done in a predictable manner. The Board, led by a president selected by the GC, would have one member from each of the six territorial representation and WIPA and WICUA, and responsible for the general operations of West Indies cricket.   It should be supported as at present by a professional management team.
Dr. Julian Hunte, president of the WICB, who had succeeded Ken Gordon, and the WICB accepted that WI cricket was actually the ‘property’ of the West Indian people -represented by the wider, identified stakeholders. But they explicitly rejected the reduction of territorial representation and most germanely, the formation of a GC under which the ECB would function. As PJ Patersom noted, real reform “was torpedoed from the very start by the persons who insisted on maintaining their positions at all costs.”
Two years later under unrelenting pressure from stakeholders including the Caricom PM Sub-Committee on Cricket, the WICB commissioned another Report, under Charles Wilkens, chairman of the their Governance Committee. In terms of ‘governance’ the Wilkins report, in its first recommendation, called for a reduction of the board to fifteen, comprising the president, vice-president, six territorial board appointees, six elected directors (independents) and the CEO who should be ex officio.
In September of this year, the WICB absolutely rejected the reduction of the territorial representation from twelve to six and Wilkens promptly resigned from the WICB Governance Committee. The WICB’s announcement last week, to add five new “Special Members” to join the current two Special Members – West Indies Players Association (WIPA) and West Indies Cricket Umpires Association (WICUA) is of absolutely no consequence. In addition to being in a minority, these Special Members have no voting rights.
The WICB has therefore conducted another pappy show.