Barclay calls for West Indies to play as individual nations

The Caribbean’s cricket leaders have all dismissed the suggestion by the outgoing chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), Greg Barclay, that the West Indies should be dismantled as one entity and the countries play as separate nations. He also suggested that the ICC should also abolish its Full Member status.

Barclay’s comments were swiftly rejected by Conde Riley, the Barbados Cricket Association president, as “madness. ” He suggested that the individual territories put measures in place to improve cricket in the region.

Cricket West Indies (CWI) President Dr. Kishore Shallow said it is “unfortunate.”

He said, “We (West Indies) have a rich history, a rich legacy that is almost unmatched in international cricket, and the contribution that West Indies has made to global cricket is there in record to show.”

The West Indies played its first Test in 1928 and dominated the sport in the 1980s. Led first by Clive Lloyd, then Sir Vivian Richards and Sir Richie Richardson, the West Indies did not lose a single Test series between 1980 and 1995 after winning the first two ICC ODI World Cups in 1975 and 1979.

In an interview, Barclay highlighted the plight of Cricket West Indies, which has faced significant financial difficulty over the last few years, particularly heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Barclay said, “You look at the West Indies; I love what they’ve done for the game, but is the West Indies in its current form sustainable?”  “Is it time for them to break into each of their islands?

“The thing is, can they (West Indies) afford to (continue to play Test cricket)? They barely can make their books balance now.

“What they’ve achieved in cricket is phenomenal when you think that they are a group of disparate islands that don’t really have anything in common other than cricket and, yet, they’ve held themselves together for that period of time as the West Indies.”
CWI, the team’s governing body, consists of the six cricket associations of Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Windward Islands. It takes great pride and responsibility to grow, guide, and protect cricket throughout the 15 English-speaking Caribbean countries that form the West Indies.

He added, “The West Indies would say, why do we go from full member to 14 associates (if we split into island nations)? But that is about really getting the governance thing right. Cricket is almost unique. You’ve got this group of full members, and you’ve got the rest. Surely, just dispense with that and go, okay, someone’s number one, and somebody’s number 120. And you can move up and down, get ranked on performance, on and off the field.”

“The higher up you go, the more money you get, the more exposure you get. And if you’re not performing, then you go down.”
Shallow said, “World cricket would not have been the same without the involvement of West Indies. I find it to be quite unfortunate that the former chair would be so irresponsible in his comments.”

The West Indies has continued to set records over the years, even in the recent past when its grip on world cricket started to slacken.