Rain, No Play

New WICB President, Julian Hunte.

After being elected as the new President of the WICB today, Julian Hunte demonstrated in his first day on the job the kind of wisdom that is giving this writer reason to hope for a better day in West Indies cricket. Today, for the first time, the WIPA president, Dinanath Ramnarine was made a (non-member) director of the WICB along with 3 other people: Professor Hillary Beckles, the principal of the Cave Hill campus of the UWI; Ken Hewitt, head of the finance committee of the recent World Cup and importantly former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd.  read more »

Bruce Aanensen, CEO WICB

When one feels aggrieved by another person's comments or statements, that person certainly has a right to defend their self interests. On Thursday of this week, embattled WICB CEO Bruce Aanensen felt the need to defend his "good name and reputation", following WIPA President Dinanath Ramnarine's letter to outgoing WICB President Ken Gordon, requesting Aanensen's removal.

Aanensen opened his own letter by saying that he "had contemplated not responding to the accusations made by Mr. Ramnarine..." and he would have been well served to have followed his initial position. Instead of letting Gordon's reply suffice, Aanensen launched into his own laundry list of complaints against Ramnarine, stating that he had among other things, "deliberately not spoken the truth". At least Gordon's letter had a measure of decency to it, Aanensen didn't even bother with that. Aanensen also accused Ramnarine of "spreading misinformation to embarrass the WICB". It seems to us that Aanensen and his colleagues needed no help from Ramnarine to embarrass the WICB as evidenced by the England tour arbitration, including the apparent contradiction of Aanensen's statements by the Barbadian Chief Justice Sir David Simmons, the apparent contradiction of Aanensen by Eddie Green, CARICOM's assistant secretary general, as to whether CARICOM had given the go ahead for the canceled Zimbabwe A team tour, the Gayle-Ganga captaincy fiasco and the late arrival of ODI players in England among other things. All within three months of Aanensen being on the job.  read more »

West Indies cricket is proving to be a soap opera that doesn't seem to stop serving up juicy plot lines for all those who enjoy seeing the interactions of people who have nothing but disdain for each other. For those, like myself, who care about West Indies cricket, the whole episode is sickening.

Dinanath Ramnarine, President and CEO of WIPA wrote to Ken Gordon, WICB President calling for WICB CEO Bruce Aanensen's replacement. Ramnarine claimed that Aanensen's "negative" leadership style made it impossible to deal with him. Ramnarine pointed to Aanensen's publicly calling the players "incompetent" in the middle of a tour, the bungling of the arrival of the ODI players in England and the mishandling of the canceled A team tour to Zimbabwe, the tussle with the selectors about whether Gayle or Ganga would be captain of the ODI side in England among other "highlights" of Aanensen's 3 month stint as CEO. (Aside: going back over this list makes me really wonder how this man still has a job!)  read more »

Yesterday's commanding victory by the West Indies to seal the 3 match ODI series 2 - 1 must have been a joy to watch for West Indies fans all over the world. The scenes of jubilation by the players on the field and by West Indians in the crowd demonstrated just how much this win meant.

The 93 run victory marked the first series win for the West Indies in Tests or one day cricket since beating Zimbabwe and India in one day series in the West Indies last year and their first away series win since winning the ICC Champions Trophy in 2004.

One of the stark differences between the players in the limited overs series and their performances in the Test series must have been the unbridled joy that they showed on the field. To be true, there wasn't much to celebrate in the Test series, losing 0 - 3 with one loss being the largest ever margin of defeat for a West Indies Test team, but there certainly was a noticeable change in the level of energy and passion on display during the Twenty20 and ODI matches. The scenes of joy yesterday certainly capped off months of frustration. The ebullience of Dwayne Bravo, Fidel Edwards and yes even Mr Cool himself, Chris Gayle, were in stark contrast to the almost lack of effort that was seen at times in the Test matches. Why the change?  read more »