Editorial | Dismantling WI cricket?

This newspaper would welcome, and indeed requests, greater clarity from Cricket West Indies’ (CWI) CEO for his seeming implication that Caribbean governments have been unreliable partners in projects and schemes to improve the financial state of the regional body.

As part of that exercise, Mr Chris Dehring, the CWI board of governors, and the organisation’s owners, the territorial cricket associations, should also explain the fundamental, concrete steps they have taken so that any channelling of substantial taxpayers’ resources to the organisation could be deemed an inescapable and defensible obligation for regional governments. In other words, CWI should show that it has conducted itself in a fashion that demonstrates that it, and the game over which it has oversight in the region, are a public good.

With a 60 per cent decline in its income for 202425, and the reversal of the previous year’s profit of US$22.6 million to a loss of US$28.5 million, CWI is facing a severe liquidity crunch. It has responded by borrowing US$12.8 million from the International Cricket Council, downsizing regional tournaments and cutting by 25 per cent the pay of players it retains on central contracts.

CWI has also said that it is pursuing income-generating ventures in the Americas as part of the effort to generate the additional US$20-25 million, which Mr Dehring suggested it would require annually to stabilise its finances.

The Gleaner’s Editorial Board appreciates CWI’s plight and its need to be creative in addressing the current crisis but also wishes to explore the issue in its broader and deeper context.

A recent report by the Trinidad Express newspaper quoted Mr Dehring as explaining that CWI could not rely on the region’s governments to lift it out of its predicament in part because of their own fiscal challenges.

But he also strongly implied that despite having the imprimatur of CARICOM, individual governments failed to follow through on initiatives from which CWI would earn money.

Mr Dehring specifically referenced BetCage, a Caribbean-focused sports betting company, with which CWI, at the end of 2024, entered into a 10-year partnership, allowing the betting company access to CWI’s intellectual property for the development of lotteries and gambling products. CWI projected that it would earn over US$100 million during the life of the deal.

However, according to Mr Dehring, the revenue stream from BetCage has been limited because of the company’s difficulties in gaining licences across the region.

“We had a CARICOM approval of a regional lottery,” the CWI CEO said. “... We beat the bushes, went to every single country. We never got a single licence.”

BetCage operates in five CARICOM member states - Barbados, Guyana, St Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, and St Kitts and Nevis - while its parent group has set up in a handful of non-CARICOM states. The difficulty, apparently, is that while CARICOM, as a nascent single market and economy, often coordinates policies, the community is not a supranational body. It remains a grouping of 15 sovereign states, to each of which BetCage would have to make individual applications for betting, gaming, and lottery licences.

“We have to go it alone, and we have to be very commercial and ambitious in what we do,” Mr Dehring said.

The emerging model for West Indies cricket, based on the CEO’s comments, was one where individual territories contribute more directly to the game’s development and national teams.

“It’s the entire country coming behind their national team, whether it be private sector, individuals, corporations, governments, the association, to participate in West Indies cricket in a much more meaningful way,” Mr Dehring said.

On its face, this appears to be a recipe for diluting the regional character of West Indies cricket, the only sport in the region that is supranational in its international component. It has been that way for the 98 years since the West Indies first played international cricket as a regional team.

In that regard, West Indies cricket transcends national boundaries and private ownership. It is a public good in which West Indian publics are deeply invested. Or if not precisely a public good, as India’s Supreme Court said in a 2015 ruling in favour of the Bihar Cricket Association against the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the court held that while not performing ‘public duties’ in the precise sense of a state institution under the Indian constitution, the BCCI nonetheless discharged “some duties like the selection of the Indian Cricket Team, controlling the activities of the players. These activities can be said to be akin to public duties or state functions so that if there is any breach of a constitutional or statutory obligation or the rights of other citizens, the aggrieved party shall be entitled to seek redress under the ordinary law or by way of a writ petition”.

Similar public-interest values apply to CWI although its owners, the territorial boards, cling tenaciously to private rights even as they look to governments, which already invest heavily in stadia, for additional support. It would be easier for CARICOM to act cohesively in its support if the owners of CWI were to fully embrace the concept of West Indies cricket as a public good.

In that regard, the Editorial Board recommends that CWI revisit the Patterson Report of 2007 on the reform of West Indies cricket, especially its proposal for a stakeholder council representing regional governments, former cricketers, the national associations, players, and other interest groups. This group would establish strategic goals, determine policy, and appoint leadership.