PM bowls googly at CWI for not celebrating milestones

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has bowled another googly at Cricket West Indies, which is under the leadership of Kishore Shallow, a candidate for the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) in general elections widely expected later this year.

In his latest delivery, Gonsalves described the governing body for cricket in the region as a private entity managing a public good but lacking popular support. 

Gonsalves accused CWI of not celebrating two major accomplishments of the team 60 and 50 years ago because they are preoccupied with “minutiae”. 

“… Cricket West Indies, rather than involving the people across the region, they’re a private company registered in the BVI trying to manage a public good,” Gonsalves said.

Speaking on NBC Radio, Gonsalves said CWI has no popular support “because the national organisations, the national entities in cricket, they themselves are not popularly elected bodies.

“In fact, there’s a lot of undemocracy in those entities, which you just pile the lack of democracy as you go high up the chain. And what sustains it is its links to the ICC. 

“And it was once linked with aristocrats in Britain and financiers in Britain — bankers. The headquarters have now moved to Dubai. It ain’t reach Bombay or Delhi, but almost to Bombay and Delhi. And new masters of global cricket is Indian cricket imperialism and dreamers.”

Gonsalves said the “contradiction has to be resolved between a sport which is popular, though declining in popularity, with this entity called CWI — cricket West, indies, this officialdom — which is a brake on the further advance of cricket and is becoming an irrelevance to the advance of the sport itself.”

The prime minister said what is needed is “a paradigm shift; not to tinker with administrative or managerial minutiae. The contradiction has to be resolved between a private entity and the public good; private entity seeking to manage this public good.”

Gonsalves has been bowling at CWI since Shallow, whose presidency he had supported, was announced as a candidate for the opposition.
He has said that he regrets supporting Shallow and galvanising other CARICOM leaders in support of him at the helm of the sport in the region.

However, despite Gonsalves’ strong and public statements that Shallow should not lead CWI while named as a candidate in national elections, he was returned unopposed in March to a second consecutive three-year term as president in March. 

Shallow will serve alongside Vice President Azim Bassarath, who was also elected unopposed.

Shallow’s nomination came from the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board and the Leeward Islands Cricket Board.

The Jamaica Cricket Association and the Windward Islands Cricket Board backed Bassarath’s nomination.

“… one of the problems with the opposition in St. Vincent is why they have never been able to high fall Ralph and the Unity Labor Party, they do not understand how the brain works, how the thinking takes place,” Gonsalves said.

“That’s where you have to get it first because they are accustomed to mechanistic either or thought and the subtleties and the richness of dialectical analyses lose them.

“And a former — somebody who I thought would have understood this kind of a conversation who is a turncoat, I realised that he’s never been able to shed this cloak now of an embrace of petty bourgeoise perspectives, which descend into either or categories without the richness of the analysis. And so slogans, replace thought. I’m John P you. You notice how the brain is working,” the minister said. 

He said history is vital, adding that the “technicians in Cricket West Indies’ leadership so preoccupied with managerial minutiae, administrative minutiae and massaging their links with ICC, because that’s the only place from which they get their legitimacy” that they had overlooked two important milestones. 

He said the West Indies Cricket Team was “crowned, unofficially, the test champions” on May 17, 1965 — 60 years ago — when the regional team defeated Australia in the series in the West Indies.

“Now you would think that Cricket West Indies will say or do something about the 60th anniversary and plan some event,” Gonsalves said.

“How could you be so thinking because you’re concentrating on administrative, managerial minutiae with no strategic focus? And about seeing if you can get in on the passport-selling racket and the video slot machines crumbs, which are addictive and subversive of the very youth who want to come into the cricket,” he said.

He further said the first ICC One-Day International competition was played between June 7 and 21, 1975.

“Now we became champions, unofficial champions, of Test cricket 60 years ago, in May. In June, the first ICC ODI championship, we won it. We won the second one, too. You want to tell me there are no plans for the commemoration of either of them?” Gonsalves said. 

“An organisation like CWI, Cricket West Indies, which has no sense of history, concerned with administrative, managerial minutiae, an in quest of an illusory pot of gold relating to passport selling and crumbs from video slot machines, which are addictive and subversive of the young, they are truly adrift, and they’re a brake on the further advancement of cricket, a new paradigm is needed.”

Shallow has spoken out strongly in support of citizenship by investment (CBI), a policy of the opposition New Democratic Party, on whose ticket he is slated to contest the election.

SVG, under Gonsalves’ leadership, remains the only independent Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States member country without a CBI programme. 

Gonsalves, who ended SVG’s CBI programme after he came to office in March 2001, has described them as unsustained. His suggestion recently that CBI programmes are inherently corrupt drew a sharp public response from his Antiguan counterpart, Gaston Browne.