By Tony McWatt
With just about seven months left remaining on Ricky Skerrit’s Cricket West Indies (CWI)
Presidency, extremely disappointing would arguably have to be the fairest possible verdict of
any assessment of his four-year tenure! With Skerrit not expected to seek re-election at next
year’s 2023 CWI Annual General Meeting the question now becomes as to who will emerge as
his hopefully, far more effective, replacement?
Skerrit’s initial March 2019 appointment to the Presidency, as Dave Cameron’s replacement,
had been greeted with widespread optimism throughout the Caribbean. The prevailing hope
was that after six years of Cameron’s rule, Skerritt’s breath-of-fresh-air Presidency would herald
the implementation of policies, procedures and practices that would have resulted in better onfield
performances by West Indies teams in all three of international cricket’s current formats.
As President, however, Skerritt’s major focus has instead seemingly been on restoring CWI’s
finances from its previous perilous state of reported near bankruptcy into a now far more
healthy state. For the outstanding successes he’s achieved in that endeavour he must now be
overly applauded.
As President, Skerritt has also quarterbacked the continuing ownership development of the
Coolidge Cricket Ground (CCG) as the headquarters hub for West Indies cricket. Just this past
July, CWI welcomed the first batch of students to its CCG-located High-Performance Academy.
Against those two major successes, however, there have been far too many failures particularly
in terms of the West Indies teams’ international performances.
Now almost four years later such promised improvements have failed to materialize. Under
Skerritt’s watch the West Indies team’s international stature, while having improved slightly
in Tests, has declined embarrassingly in both One Day and T2o Internationals. As former twotime
Champions, the West Indies has been relegated to the highly unwelcomed status of pretournament
qualifier contenders for this coming October’s forthcoming Australia-hosted T20
World Cup. They are in also realistic danger of missing out on automatic Super8 qualification for
next year’s India-hosted 2023 ODI World Cup.
There has also been no visible evidence to any degree of any progress made on many of the
initiatives Skerrit had identified as objectives of his second term “Forward WI Go Manifesto.”
Greater investment in Grassroots Cricket in partnership with Governments; Expansion of the
Coaching Education Program to reach over 1000 Foundation Level volunteer coaches across the
region and to include teachers and parents; A Review of the Regional Professional Franchise
System to improve standards and to generate a more sustainable cricket and learning culture;
Increased Fan engagement with commercial benefits, as well as The Establishment of a Past
Player’s Consultative Forum are all Go Forward inclusive initiatives for which there has been
absolutely no visible evidence of any meaningful progress having been made.
Against this backdrop of such catastrophic failure, the objective for Skerritt’s replacement should
now be to simply improve on the record of actually doing what has been promised during their
campaign for election to the CWI presidency. To date only one individual, the respected and
longstanding Jamaican Journalist Ray Ford, has actually announced his intentions to seek the CWI
presidency.
Some whisperings have been heard of an intended presidential bid by CWI’s current Vice-
President Dr. Kishore Shallow, who like Skerritt himself has now held his position for the past
four years. However, for having been Skerritt’s sidekick and as well for his direct involvement
with “Tapegate,” the most unfortunate and embarrassing saga of West Indies players appearing
on global televised broadcasts clad in shirts with the former team sponsors logo visibly covered
by masking tape, Shallow may have effectively scuttled any realistic hopes he may have had
for ascendancy to the CWI presidency . Despite his publicly issued personal concern over its
potentially gravely undermining effects of on the West Indies brand, Tapegate continued to be an
ongoing global eyesore for almost six months.
Apart from Ford and Shallow, Conde Riley who recently entered his fifth term as President of the
Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) is the only other person rumoured to be considering a run
for the CWI Presidency come next March. As time gets closer to the actual elections, the identities
of the actual contenders will undoubtedly be revealed.