Dismissal, probe demands
Editorial
Guyana Chronicle
April 8, 2007
THE growing pains being experienced from the Caribbean's hosting of Cricket World Cup 2007 are resulting in increasing demands for dismissals of West Indian players and the disbanding of the current West Indies Cricket Board and management.
As governments of some regional jurisdictions begin to feel the heat, cabinet ministers and officials of Local Organising Committees (LOCs) are also echoing complaints against the International Cricket Council and Cricket World Cup West Indies Inc. for imposition of regulations that have resulted in very negative results.
The ICC itself has come under sharp criticisms in countries like Britain and India, the latest being that of the former chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Lord MacLaurin, who wants an urgent review of the ICC with a view to changing its present crop of controlling officials.
Yesterday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was winding up a crucial two-day emergency meeting to come to grips with the sensational development of the Indian team's humiliation.
They had to exit CWC 07 at the preliminary stage of the game. Finding a new captain and a new coach were top priorities for yesterday's meeting.
In Pakistan, whose own national team suffered a similar humiliation and, worse, having had to return home amid ongoing investigations into the circumstances of the sudden death in Jamaica of their coach, Bob Woolmer, the future of the country's cricket board and internationally famous players remains uncertain.
Our own West Indies team players, having so deeply let us down to date for the World Cup tournament, must be made to realise the terrible hurt they have caused.
It is a hurt they can still minimise and, hopefully remove, by surprising us to still reach at least the semi-finals.
As for the current board and management of the WICB, a complete overhaul may be difficult to resist from some of its territorial affiliates.
Increasing demands are also expected for independent probes into the functioning of its subsidiary, CWC Inc that must bear much of the blame for negotiations with the ICC that have resulted in the scale of embarrassing and costly problems encountered by the LOCs of the host countries.
This, of course, is not to exonerate LOCs from some of the problems that firm, collective resistance could have avoided.
With 20 days yet to go before the World Cup final in Barbados, post mortem results on the problems encountered region-wide, would be some time in coming.