by TREVOR YEARWOOD

PRESIDENT of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), Ken Gordon, has dismissed a call for the body to be shut down or phased out.

But he conceded the WICB faced some problems, which were being tackled "systematically".

The call for a scrapping of the board was made by former chairman of Cricket World Cup 2007, Rawle Brancker, on Tuesday night.

Gordon, in Barbados, told the DAILY NATION yesterday that the basis Brancker used for making the recommendation "suggests that his remarks cannot be taken seriously".

In delivering the 13th Frank Worrell Memorial Lecture, Brancker said the WICB was "suffering from an unusually mountainous level of arrogance", had had several conflicts with its players and was facing "soaring" financial losses.

He added it was irrelevant to future development of West Indies cricket and should be replaced by a new pan-Caribbean entity, owned and financed by "the real owners of West Indies cricket – the people".

But Gordon rejected the comment about soaring losses.

"In fact, the WICB's finances have improved significantly over the past 18 months or so," he reported.

"Its operational losses were reduced from US$6.5 million in 2004-05 to a profit of US$1.5 million in 2005-06 – an improvement of over BDS$14 million in that financial year – and we are now moving to address our inherited consolidated deficit of US$15 million."

In a later radio interview, Gordon said: "I think it is important to let the record be clear that there are problems . . . that are being systematically tackled.

"One is putting everything on a brand new footing and we hope this will be reflected in the team we take to England in terms of rebuilding, but this kind of destructive approach (a reference to the Brancker comments) doesn't help anyone and it certainly doesn't help the recovery of West Indies cricket."

He said the board was in charge of cricket and therefore when things went wrong, it must accept responsibility.

On the suggestion, from Brancker, that players' pay should be based on performance, Gordon said the board would readily embrace a recommendation recently put to it that adjustments in increases in remuneration should be based on performance incentives.