WICB should move with the times

THE EDITOR: The recent announcement by the West Indies Cricket Board has thrown West Indies cricket into further disarray, if that is possible, as the next touring team is likely to be chosen from a group of players who are likely to do worse than the previous one. A West Indies team without the likes of Lara, Chanderpaul, Sarwan and Bravo cannot be our best team. While there has been much speculation about the true aims of the WICB, I am of the view that the management ethos of the WICB has not been what it should be for a very long time now.

I cannot understand the Board’s attitude towards Lara and others who have personal contracts with other sponsors when this is a feature of modern professional sport and exists in other cricketing countries. It is for this reason that I have come to the conclusion that there is some other reason for the Board’s current stand. It has been suggested in one quarter that the whole matter has to do with a power play between the two corporate sponsors at the centre of this now contentious matter. If this is so, then it would mean that the Board has taken a side in the matter. For the sake of West Indies cricket, the regional integration movement and the avoidance of us looking like true third world fools, I trust that the Board would “not let the desperate need of a thing overshadow its potential worthlessness.”

VICTOR MALONEY
Diego Martin