Editorial | Cricket West Indies rings shallow

Cricket West Indies (CWI), the administrator of the sport in the Caribbean, hasn’t as yet disclosed the decisions taken at the annual meeting of its shareholders held on Saturday.

But the outcome hardly matters. For it is clear that the organisation’s directors neither took, nor advanced, the morally consequential decision that was required of them. It wasn’t reported that Dr Kishore Shallow was booted. He remains CWI’s president. The stakeholders of West Indies cricket are therefore stuck with Dr Shallow until his current three-year term expires in 2028, at which time he has promised not to seek re-election.

This situation represents a flaw in the governance of West Indies cricket. It is also a failure of a critical test of ethics and accountability by the still relatively new government of St Vincent and the Grenadines. Even at this stage, it is still not too late for the country’s prime minister, Dr Godwin Friday, to fix the error.

If Dr Shallow is insistent on remaining at the helm of CWI and Dr Friday is committed to ethical conduct in government, as well removing the real and potential conflicts of interests by ministers, then he should fire Dr Shallow from his cabinet.

When Dr Shallow, as the vice-presidential candidate, was part of Ricky Skerritt’s 2019 slate to oust Dave Cameron as president of CWI, the struggle was not solely about the declining performance of the West Indies cricket team. An undertone of their campaign was of the perceived decline in the ethical standards in the management of the regional game at the highest level.

In the seven years since the Skerritt/Shallow victory, and three since Dr Shallow has been at the helm, their administrations – despite tinkering at the edges – have done far too little to achieve the necessary radical overhaul of CWI, to make the organisation more accountable and responsive to the interests of the game’s stakeholders. In that sense, Dr Shallow’s staying as president, and CWI’s shareholders’ acceptance thereof, is in part, in this newspaper’s view, a reflection of this failure. It absolves them of any moral obligation to change the status quo. So, CWI’s shareholders (six territorial cricket associations and boards) maintain a firm grip on the institution. It is not this newspaper’s sense that they conceive of West Indies cricket as public good in the Caribbean.

For a good part of his incumbency, Dr Shallow was an opposition politician in St Vincent and the Grenadines, but without a seat in the country’s legislature. In last November’s general election, Dr Shallow became a member of the House of Representatives and was named by Prime Minister Friday as the country’s minister of tourism and maritime affairs.

OPTICS WEREN’T GOOD

The optics of this appointment weren’t good, which ought to have been obvious to Dr Friday and to Dr Shallow. But optics are not the issue. The potential for conflicts of interests are real – for Drs Friday and Shallow.

Cricket in the West Indies is beyond mere sport. It is the only game in which the Caribbean fields a single, combined team at the international level. Moreover, it has been a significant social and political force in the Caribbean, and one of the perceived critical agents of regional integration. Caribbean Community (CARICOM) governments are heavily invested in West Indies cricket. Indeed, regional governments have commissioned reports on the governance of West Indies cricket, including one that called on CWI to disband itself and for the creation of the new governing body that is more representative of regional interests.

CARICOM also has a prime minister’s sub-committee on cricket, which, especially during Dave Cameron’s administration, was often at odds with CWI. Recently, the tone at that committee has been less caustic, but prime ministers have remained concerned with matters of governance of regional cricket.

In that context, it is troubling, and raises questions of ethics and conflicts of interest, should the prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines have to participate in a meeting of CARICOM leaders at which matters relating to West Indies cricket are discussed, while one of his senior ministers is head of cricket’s governing body.

Further, there is a strong likelihood of Dr Shallow’s responsibility as minister of tourism intermingling with his role as president of CWI. Like other countries in the region, St Vincent and the Grenadines is keen to promote and develop sports tourism, in which cricket can play a role. In any negotiations between CWI and the St Vincent and Grenadines government and its tourism and sports authorities, which skin does Dr Shallow wear?

Yet, on his election to parliament and ministerial appointment, they didn’t see holding the two jobs at the same time in ethical and moral terms. For him, the only question was whether he could physically juggle both sets of commitments – in the sense of finding the time to do them.

Clearly, these issues have not arisen for CWI’s shareholders. Against that background, CWI’s pre-conference declaration that the meeting “represents an important moment of reflection for Cricket West Indies and reaffirms our commitment to transparency, accountability, and sound governance” rings shallow.