ICC to consider TnT’s request; Is it the end of West Indies cricket?
Dubai, Dec 12, 2031 In a surprise move the International Cricket Council (ICC) has said that they are seriously considering the request by the Trinidad & Tobago Cricket Board seeking defection from the West Indies Cricket Board and pursue qualification to Premier League Test Cricket (PLT) as a stand-alone nation. Lalit Modi, the Chairman of ICC ExCo mentioned in an interview to ESPN Cricinfo, in the back drop of the recent plans to reorganize the structure of Minor League Test Cricket (MLT), said, “…. (TnT’s request) has been passed onto the ICC Executive Committee and we would be discussing it in our next board meeting. It is too early to comment”.
The TnT board had officially applied for the defection after WI failed to qualify for the PLT for the third successive cycle, finishing fifth behind the eventual qualifiers Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, and Nepal and Netherland in the 2026-30 MLT. TnT has been lobbying for the past 2 years about defecting from the WICB as it believes that the WICB’s precarious financial situation has been primarily responsible for its inability to progress to the PLT. It is also widely believed that TnT thinks that it can replicate its success in the T20 Champions League as a test team. TnT has won the Champions League thrice in the last decade and has consistently finished in the top half of the table. The bigger reason though seems to be a long-term strategic vision to isolate TnT from the existing cricket culture in the Caribbean, which has seen a slow death since the WI, along with Zimbabwe were relegated to the MLT in 2018, when the two-tier test championship was officially launched.
The relegation in 2018 saw a massive out flux of players who preferred to turn freelance club cricketers in favor of the WI cricket contract. Then captain Dwayne Bravo, Chris Gayle and Keiron Pollard rejected the WI contracts citing the quality of opposition in the second tier of test cricket though it is hard to understate the fact that cash rich contracts from various T20 franchises were also a key factor. It would be highly unfair to judge those cricketers real motives for Darren Bravo, who many pundits consider to be the best batsman of his generation by a far margin, never got to face the likes of Mohammed Amir and Pat Cummins in the five-day format. The retirement of Marlon Samuels in 2017 and the inability of Kemar Roach to recuperate from his frequent injuries meant that by the time WI entered the first cycle of the minor test match league they were highly leveraged, as could be seen in their performance where they finished third, failing to be promoted to the PLT.
Since the relegation, the WICB has constantly faced financial troubles despite getting its promised share of revenue from the ICC by virtue of being a full member of the ICC. Unlike the present cash rich cricket boards of the PLT, most test playing nations during the time were cash strapped and relied heavily on stadium, sponsorship and broadcasting revenues from playing against the bigger teams like India, England and Australia. The two-tier system has done wonders to the teams in PLT whose revenues have almost doubled in nominal dollars (in spite of partisan scheduling structure that came in vogue after the formation of the ICC ExCo in 2015) of the over the past decade because of the highly competitive nature of the league that has attracted global sponsors and crowds alike but has had a negative ripple effect on the full members like the WI who have been stuck in the MLT. Matches against the likes of Netherland, Nepal and even last cycle’s winner Bangladesh have seen empty stadiums and lack of sponsors. The skewed revenue sharing structure of the ICC has also punished the WICB, as its revenues are now dependent on how much it can contribute to the ICC purse. The WICB seems to be stuck in a vicious cycle. The financial situation has limited the WICBs investment in infrastructure and players, which in turn has stagnated the growth of cricket in the region. The TnT board seems to have been the sole exception thanks to its performance in the Champions League.
More recently, the absence of the role models to look up in the test arena and the lack of glamour and money in the minor league, the supply base of potential cricketers has seen a massive reduction. The number of teenagers playing cricket today is less than half than those that played cricket in 2000s, even taking into account the shrinkage in the Caribbean population. During the 2000s, the WI lost out its youngsters to the NBA and college football in the United States but the constantly rising popularity of cricket in the United States has meant that the Caribbean loses more players to the American College Cricket (ACC) than to the NBA and the NCAA combined these days. The ACC, which started as a little known organizer of weekend cricket for universities in the US in the mid-2000s by Lloyd Jodah and promoted by former West Indian stalwarts including Chanderpaul and Kallicharan, today runs a parallel cricket league to the ICC organized events in the US. It has been gaining immense popularity over the last decade almost to the extent of giving college football a run for its money when it comes to audience and advertisements. The ACC, which has been at constant logger heads with the ICC over issues of recognition, has thrived thanks to its unique model where it is the first sports league to be backed by investors with most of its funding coming from silicon valley based Indian VCs.
Even though it is too early to take a call on the death of WI cricket, the TnT defection might just be the first step and the two-tier test cricket system conceptualized 17 years ago is certain to take a bulk of the blame. The ICC, aware of the various complexities in the minor league has been taking steps over the past couple of years, including reorganizing the revenue sharing model and providing special incentives in the ICC organized events for sponsors of the MLT, but it just might be a bit too late. And West Indies might not just be the only country heading in that direction.
