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The Barbadian leader said Caribbean governments have an obligation to help in the development of the game as stakeholders, while leaving the business of the actual running of cricket to administrators. “Cricket West Indies has an obligation, once again, to change its governance model, and this is where I differ from the Wehby Report again. I believe strongly that we have a duty to establish a public company that is capitalised by shareholding from the Cricket West Indies , but which is also open to equity participation by every Caribbean person ... because deep down, even when we get upset, we love bad and we love hard, but we have to start to put our money where our mouth is. We need money in the game to finance the technology; we need money in the game to be able to carry our players and put them on a level playing field with those other teams who have access to the best that the world has to offer. We understand that it would be difficult for governments who may be fiscally strapped at the time when the world is reeling from pandemic to climate to global supply disruptions to crime. But I also understand that every time we have been successful as a nation hasn’t been when governments act alone or entities act alone. It is when we come together as a people.”
P rime Minister Mottley turned the spotlight on club cricket and lamented the lack of proper structure and sufficient mentors to help guide up-and-coming cricketers. She said this intergenerational and interclass mixing was vital. “As governments, we have to get back into the business of serious development at the different levels. If it is schoolboy or schoolgirl cricket alone, you’re not going to get that intergenerational and interclass mixing that is so critical for us to remain a cohesive society. What we need are opportunities for people who would not otherwise have that chance to mix and get to know each other to be able to do so.” An area of regret for the Barbadian leader was that the West Indies had not reached out to Latin America during its glory days nor invested more. However, she indicated it may not be too late in some respects. “Whether it is in food security, energy security, or cricket, we need to understand that ownership matters. There are too many Caribbean citizens in the diaspora and opportunities in Latin America for us not to
be strategic in their development to create a platform first and foremost from coaching, from other allied aspects of the game, from the ownership of franchises, the ownership of stadia, the ownership of software, the utilisation of artificial intelligence with others who are in the area of information technology and artificial intelligence, to leverage not only those current players who may rise to the occasion but the ones who are still available to us, through either video or the live person. “I had hoped … we would have been far more aggressive in the utilisation of the opportunities available to our legends [former West Indies Test cricketers], especially given the absence of appropriate compensation for them in the decades that they performed and played. The truth is that the technology has moved so quickly that we have to be smart about how we leverage their images and their lessons. We can still boast, as the smallest rock in the world, to have produced the greatest opening batsman pair [Sir Gordon Greenidge and the Most Honourable Desmond Haynes] who are both still alive … But how have we leveraged it?” u
CHILL NEWS 38
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