By Neto Baptiste
President of the Leeward Islands Cricket Board (LICB) and former Antigua and Barbuda batsman, Enoch Lewis, has labelled as disappointing, a decision by members of the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) and the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) to boycott the Cricket West Indies (CWI) Annual General Meeting that was scheduled for March 28.
“Disappointed, but not necessarily surprised because when people show you who they are you got to believe them, and you look at one of those candidates’ history and from what I read, he hasn’t had elections for 12 and a half years. It means that whatever you have done for a decade, you’ve been able to manipulate the system in such a way that you remain in power without, according to what I have read, a legal election; so this is what that person does,” he said.
The GCB, in a statement, said the main reason for their decision was that the current leadership of CWI failed to conform with the statutory requirements of the Articles of Association and present the audited financial statement of CWI.
Lewis sought to debunk the claims, stating that members had been in receipt of the CWI financial statement two weeks prior to the meeting, while the consolidated statement, although distributed late, was accepted by all the members, including both the GCB and the BCA.
“Firstly, the financial statement for Cricket West Indies has been in the hands of the members for now, more than two weeks [while] the consolidated statement has been in the hands of all the territories since last Friday. So, the information in terms of the finances are there … so it is not a question of impropriety or nothing untoward. It is a technical issue where they are saying to put the financial statements together,” he said.
According to a CWI statement, all eight representatives duly authorised to represent the Jamaica Cricket Association, Leeward Islands Cricket Board (LICB), Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) and the Windward Islands Cricket Board were present.
Lewis said the actions of both the GCB and the BCA only solidifies the LICB’s stance that the incumbent Ricky Skerritt and his vice president Dr Kishore Shallow is the best team for the job.
“You have indicated that this person who is running Cricket West Indies are not really the best persons to do so, and the opportunity comes for you to go and beat them at the polls and you run away and hide and dodge and find every excuse in the book not to show up so that shows me that you’re not serious. That is why the Leeward Islands Cricket Board is saying that the current team has demonstrated by their actions that Skerritt and Shallow are obviously the only persons right now in the race that can run West Indies cricket properly,” he said.
The body’s AGM is now scheduled for April 11 via Zoom.