The only sensible response to the utterly backward decision of the “West Indies Cricket Board” (WICB) to eject the Combined Campuses and Colleges (CCC) cricket team from the regional first class cricket competition is to call for the immediate resignation of the President of the WICB, Mr. Whycliffe “Dave” Cameron of Jamaica.

But this response becomes doubly appropriate and necessary when one discovers that Mr. Cameron’s perverse assessment of the CCC’s suitability to remain in the Competition is based on small island insularity and anti – Barbadian sentiment!

Over the past week, the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation of Barbados and the regionally televised Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) news report featured Mr. Cameron making his defence of the WICB’s decision to jettison the CCC. And Mr. Cameron’s defence can be reduced to the following propositions :-

(1) The only persons who are complaining about the ejectment of the CCC are Barbadians.

(2) For a team that was supposedly established as a vehicle for Campuses and Colleges across the region, the CCC comprises an inordinately high number of Barbadians.

(3) If the CCC restructures its team by reducing the percentage of Barbadian players, the WICB will consider allowing it back in the competition.

(4) The CCC has submitted a restructuring plan to the WICB, but the WICB considers this to be a preliminary plan that needs to be further developed.

The President of the WICB is therefore justifying the derailment of the University of the West Indies’ flagship cricket development project on the narrow and insular ground that there are too many Barbadians involved! A project that arguably constitutes the single most progressive initiative taken in the Caribbean over the past decade to assist in the redevelopment of West Indies Cricket, and that has been a vehicle for the development of a number of our beckoning Test team prospects, is to be gratuitously destroyed on the altar of anti-Barbadianism!

This is totally unacceptable! As far as our organisation is concerned, Mr. Cameron has – by his own words – disqualified himself from occupying the exalted post of President of our WIBC! He has demonstrated that his thinking is captive to small island prejudices and petty nationalism, and that cannot augur well for the administration of West Indies Cricket under his stewardship!

Our organisation also hereby calls for the immediate reinstatement of the CCC team in our regional cricket competition.

We also cry “shame” on the other members of the West Indies Cricket Board of Directors who supported this backward decision to eject the CCC cricket team.

• David A. Comissiong

President, Clement Payne Movement