NEWS
Follow UsJohnny Grave, the chief executive of Cricket West Indies (CWI), has lauded the BCCI, claiming that India ‘cannot do more for the world game’ than what they are already doing.
The BCCI, of late, have been at the receiving end of criticism for holding a ludicrous amount of power, there effectively ‘controlling’ the game. Chris Gayle, former West Indies opener, opined recently that India ‘run cricket’ and that players have no power, with it being impossible for the players to challenge the BCCI and India, regarding anything, due to the power the board/country holds.
But Grave lauded the BCCI for playing their part in growing the game, citing the side’s ongoing tour of Zimbabwe as proof for their commitment to grow the sport.
"One country cannot play any more cricket, cannot do more for the world game than they are doing, and that's the BCCI,” Grave said speaking at Lord's during MCC's inaugural World Cricket Connects symposium, reported ESPNcricinfo.
He claimed the ECB also have been doing their best, and called for an overhaul of the current financial model.
“England have been fantastic, they have toured us pretty much every year, bar a few, since 2017. Is there more they could do for us? Not really. So at that point you have to look at the model and the finances, and for leaders of the ECB, Australia and India to be even talking about it, I take it as a positive indication of a shift in mindset that needs to happen.”
Four years ago, when cricket came to a standstill for close to five months due to the pandemic, West Indies volunteered and played a three-Test series in bio-secure environments in England to help the ECB fulfill its contractual obligation to Sky Sports. The tour did not generate profit for the home board, but it helped the ECB cut down losses.
Grave asserted that the Covid period taught boards a lot of valuable lessons, the biggest one being that you ‘cannot play against yourself’.
"I think what Covid proved was that you can't play against yourselves, and that you need to have opposition," Grave said.
"The better that opposition is, and the more balanced the game is, the better the product is, because then there's genuine jeopardy.
"In Covid everyone had to come together. The fact that we were coming here and generating no revenue was irrelevant. We were trying to save the game, because none of us knew whether the game as we knew it would ever happen again."
Historically, West Indies cricket has been affected a lot by the advent of franchise cricket, with the team not having access to its best players on plenty of occasions. But there’s been a healthier balance in recent times. The T20 World Cup in 2024, for instance, saw the Windies field all its best players, including Andre Russell, who for close to half a decade now has been a T20 globetrotter.
Grave said that CWI have consciously taken the effort to balance everything to out, listening to the players’ perspective, keeping in mind the current state of the sport.
"We've had to find balance, which was initially struck by speaking to the players in a respectful way and creating two windows, in the IPL and the CPL," Grave said.
"We then tried to have balance and flexibility with our players in how we schedule bilateral cricket - we rarely play over that Christmas and New Year period because it's important for our players to be at home with their families - while we've also tried to create windows for them to go to other leagues where the calendar has allowed it.
"So it's all about balance. And at the moment Darren Sammy and Rovman Powell, the leaders of our T20 team, have really got those players focused."
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