By Neto Baptiste
Former Combined Islands and Leeward Islands batsman, Enoch Lewis, says his work as President of the Leeward Islands Cricket Board (LICB) is not done and that he will seek re-election at the body’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) slated for June 22 at a venue to be named.
The Antiguan has led the organisation for the past eight years spanning four two-year terms following his initial election to the post back in 2016 when he defeated then president, Auckland Hector, now deceased.
Speaking on the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show, Lewis said he has been on a mission to clean up the body’s image from a financial aspect.
“I took over Leeward Islands cricket when it was really at the bottom and what I mean by that is, I came to Leeward Islands meeting half million dollars in debt, including things like payments to Social Security for funds deducted from the players that weren’t paid into Social Security, so they were threatening to shutdown the Leeward Islands Cricket Board.
“There were all sorts of letters from lawyers all over the place because they owed players, they owed hotels, they owed suppliers and everybody and everybody was pretty much nipping at the heels of Leeward Islands Cricket Board and I took that over and cleaned that off last year. I paid off all of the $500,000.00 in debt,” he said.
Lewis, whose biggest challenge could come from a current LICB Vice President and head of the Nevis Cricket Board, Carlisle Powell, also noted the positive changes at the board level from a policies standpoint since his reign began.
“I have introduced a number of policies just to ensure that we look like a company and those policies were crafted and introduced for mission, vision, code of ethics and everything that a normal companies do, we are there,” he said.
“Financially, until I got to the Board, there was nothing named accounting statements and that dates back more than two decades and I’ve cleaned that up where I’ve gone back, looked at the stuff and gotten that done so now we are putting out financial statements. We are now in an era where we are transparent and we’re accountable,” he added.
The LICB boss also reveals plans for additional programmes for development for both boys and girls.
“We are in the process of establishing an under-23 so we want to move from six to eight programmes now so we are going to get an under-23 programme and we are going to get a girls under-16 programme so we have already established those.
“We want to hire somebody to look after women’s cricket and we have already hired somebody to look after youth cricket and one of them is Pernell Watley and the other one is Percy Daniel in St Kitts. Percy will look after the women’s cricket and Shafto [Watley] will look after the youth cricket in general,” the former player said.
Should he be returned as president for a fifth term, Lewis will serve a three-year cycle in accordance with the body’s revised constitution which extended the board’s lifespan by a year.
