by Tony Cozier

NOT BEFORE TIME, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has set about trying to rectify the financial crisis that has brought it to virtual bankruptcy.

An accumulated deficit of US$15.4 million and a projected loss of US$7 million for the year ending last September 30, were figures enough to trigger flashing red lights and wailing sirens for Ken Gordon when he became the latest president almost five months ago.

As an experienced and acclaimed executive in the highly competitive corporate sector, he would have immediately recognised a desperate situation that needed desperate action.

He established one committee "charged with producing recommendations for cost saving across the widest possible front" and another, what he called "a high-powered team" of three from the Caribbean private sector, to identify new sources of finance, primarily to fund retainer contracts for the leading players.

The report of the former group, headed by Antiguan Enoch Lewis, the former Leeward Islands opener, WICB director and bank executive, has been presented. Its recommendations, reported by Editor-in-Chief Harold Hoyte in the WEEKEND NATION just over a week ago, make instructive reading.

While the most devastating effect on the WICB's finances has been created by the International Cricket Council's changed arrangements for reciprocal international tours (Gordon put the loss at US$8 million in the four years since it was implemented), it is clear that administrative costs had spiralled out of control.

Lewis' group advised that savings of US$121 000 could be made by reducing salaries, US$71 000 on cutting back on travel, US$113 000 on tele-communications (fewer regional and international telephone calls mainly), US$218 000 on marketing and public relations and US$213 000 on "third party fees and meetings".

That amounts to US$723 000. It is a whopping figure and the question needs to be asked why not even a financial crisis could alert those in charge of the day-to-day operations to such extravagance.

The two most revealing recommendations of the Lewis report are for a "reduction in per diem allowances, to be brought in line with regional corporate levels" and "a review of credit card usage on a quarterly basis".

In the first instance, it must be asked how the per diem allowances of such an impoverished organisation managed to be more than "regional corporate levels".

In both cases, the references indicate, at best, lax accounting; at worst, abuse of the system. These are areas over which the WICB should have had more control and to which it now has to pay more attention.

In contrast, it has been powerless to prevent the damage caused by the ICC's regulations under what it calls its Future Tours Programme (FTP), adopted four years ago.

Under the system, each full member is obligated to play the other, home and away, in a five-year period.

The idea is principally to ensure that the newer, weaker, full members, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, are not shunned by the established countries (it was eight years after their elevation to Test status before Australia and the West Indies played Zimbabwe).

Significantly for the West Indies, the previous financial arrangement, which had been determined by negotiations between the boards involved, was changed.

It made the hosts responsible for all the visiting team's internal expenses – travel, accommodation and the like – without committing them to a share of gate receipts, television rights or other revenue.

For the West Indies, it was clearly going to be disastrous as Wes Hall,
in his term as WICB president, kept repeating. It suited everyone else fine and all other nine full ICC members voted for its implementation.

Bangladesh and Zimbabwe were guaranteed tours of Australia and England,
for instance, without having to pull their pockets and, with weak currencies and cheap local costs, made their money on reciprocal tours, Bangladesh was further boosted by the huge crowds that filled their grounds.

For the others, the arrangement was equitable. England kept their sizeable profits from gate receipts, broadcasting rights, sponsorship and the like when Australia toured; and vice-versa. The same was true of India and South Africa and, if less so, of Sri Lanka, Pakistan and New Zealand, they could live with it.

For the West Indies, it was devastating.

Overseas tours had always been the WICB's financial lifeblood. A percentage of the host board's profits was always included in negotiated agreements.

Fellow ICC members understood, if often grudgingly, that constraints of size, both geographical and economic, meant the West Indies could not reciprocate in full.

The arrangement worked so well that, as far back as 1950, the West Indies returned with £30 000 pounds (probably six times that figure at today's value) from that historic tour. In 1963, the figure was £55 000.

In the 1980s, when the West Indies toured Australia five times, they brought back between US$300 000 and US$500 000 each time.

Under the present arrangement, they come back with nothing. The ICC expects them to make their profits from home series, an impractical assumption in a region where high hotel prices during the cricket-cum-tourist season and costly air travel are compounded by small crowds.

It does not help when board officials and operatives are running up high travel costs, occupying five-star hotel rooms, cashing in on the inflated per diems and burning the plastic.

In the recent past, only when England tour with their hordes of supporters are gate takings satisfactory. Only England and India attract sizeable revenue from television rights.

So the West Indies lose on both the swings and the roundabouts. It is the cricketing equivalent of the squeeze being felt by Caribbean sugar and banana producers in the changing environment of globalisation.

Gordon has revealed that the WICB has "reopened discussions about this severe damage" with ICC president Ehsan Mani and chief executive Malcolm Speed and describes their initial responses as "very positive".

In the meantime, the Carib Beer Cup has had to be reduced to one round, the Shell Academy closed, subsidies to member associations withheld and retainer contracts put on hold.

Tony Cozier is the leading cricket writer in the West Indies.