Ramnarine wants local clubs’ voices heard

Ramnarine and his team will aim to defeat the current TT CB administration led by Azim Bassarath on October 22. The elections were originally scheduled to be held on October 29, but with Divali being celebrated that day, the date has been moved.

Ramnarine and his team, which includes Daren Ganga, wants to bring changes to the TT CB constitution.

They have been advocating for the “One Club, One Vote” System and removing the 12 outgoing votes currently enjoyed by the Bassarath-led administration. He said the outgoing votes is akin to one club being allowed two innings to bat while others are allowed just one. He noted that Executive member Manohar Ramsaran went up for club election in the Central Zone and was soundly whipped but yet he is allowed an outgoing vote even though he was rejected.

Ramnarine is also concerned about the fairness of the elections and clubs not permitted to vote being allowed to do so.

The ex-West Indies Players Association (WIPA) president wants to see the Tobago Cricket Association, Primary schools, Secondary schools, Umpires Council and women’s cricket all have a seat on the executive of the TT CB, while being full members.

“(We want to) bring all the stakeholders together, Primary schools, Secondary schools, umpires, women’s cricket, Tobago cricket, will all be part of the executive and the decision making process.” Discussing his other ideas, Ramnarine would like to implement a plan for young players while empowering clubs. “I think the most important thing is to have an aggressive development plan with our young players. Most importantly we need to empower the clubs and help them when the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board has changed to help them with their own governance structure.” He explained, “we need to create a development fund for the clubs so they will be able to be part of a structure that would allow them to benefit from funding and so on.

We also need to help them with their own governance structure that would be able to have a proper constitution and proper financial statements. This would allow them (the clubs) to become self sustainable and to be able to get funding from corporate sponsors because they will be able to meet certain standards. Many of the clubs need serious assistance in terms of funding and having proper development programmes, in terms of succession planning and so on.” The former West Indies spinner wants to see a higher level of professional club cricket league in the country. Ramnarine reiterated that the constitution of the TT CB must be changed. “I think the most critical thing at this point in time has to be the issue of the constitution.

Unless the constitution is changed we would be leaving out a large percentage, 85 to 90 percent of the cricketing loving public and people who are involved in the game would not be involved because what you have is 12 people holding the cricket board at ransom and that has to change. The sponsors will not want to sponsor an undemocratic organisation, the whole question of transparency and accountability, it will be always questionable.”