CWI board must resign

THE EDITOR: I have said jokingly on numerous occasions that you can never die from a heart attack if you support Manchester United, the TT football team and West Indies cricket. WI cricket keeps proving that I am right. By not qualifying for the 2023 World Cup due to inept performances in the qualifiers the rest of the world is laughing at us.

We ruled the cricket world when cricketers played for pride and from their hearts. Money was not an issue, we just loved beating the other teams. Now we have a number of underachievers playing for the almighty dollar.

Our administration has been shifting from one group to another, just like the politics in some of the countries in the region, without anything being done to improve the entity for which they were put to manage.

From a layman's point of view, the administration of cricket in the region is non-existent since there are no visible programmes in place to ensure our upcoming players can be developed to match those of the other nations. Even the minnows are now better than the West Indies.

For the qualifying tournament a number of players were chosen who basically cannot compete at that level. All the other countries in the top ten have at least seven players with Test experience on their teams. The West Indies team comprised eight mediocre T20 players. Our selectors seem to just be selecting players on an "eat a food" basis.

I can rant and rave about the mismanagement of West Indies cricket and come up with a million reasons why the current WI board and the boards of all the countries in the region should resign, but I leave that up to the conscience of the individuals.

However, I urge them to do the right thing and resign. Give the jobs to people who are not interested in the free flights, free five-star hotels, sitting in Lord's, rubbing shoulders with sheiks in Dubai and the other non-cricketing reasons.

I was only recently reminded of an article written in December 2015 in which a former CWI director said that West Indies cricket could be gone by 2025. Looks like we are two years early.

Let us get West Indies cricket back where it belongs by getting rid of all these incompetent administrators who are robbing us older folks of our revered pastime and the youths of a vision of playing cricket at the highest level.

LARRY SOOKLALSINGH

via e-mail