Despite baggage situation, Team India was magnanimous: Cricket West Indies President Rickey Skerritt

File image of Rickey Skerritt (Image Source: @windiescricket/ official Twitter account of Cricket West Indies)

For over three years, Rickey Skerritt has been in charge of West Indies cricket. In March 2019, he was elected president of Cricket West Indies; prior to that he had been manager of the national team besides being a top political figure in St Kitts and Nevis.

India’s tour of the Caribbean threw up some unexpected challenges for Skerritt – visas for players for both the West Indies and Indian teams were in doubt until the last minute for the last two games of the T20 series, for instance. Somehow, Skerritt managed to get the tour going as planned.

Skerritt spoke exclusively to Moneycontrol on a range of issues related to Caribbean cricket and its financial model. Here are edited excerpts:

You were always confident of games happening in the United States despite visa issues getting a lot of attention in the media. You must be relieved that finally the tour is over even if your team lost the series.

The problem is that we had no control over (the visa issues) once we submitted all of the applications. The application pre-submission work was done. For all of the important documentation, we then depend entirely on the US entry system to facilitate our request to bring what would have been only the most exciting and economically important sports tourism events to Florida.

What happened during the St Kitts T20 game (late arrival of Indian team luggage) was obviously unusual for an international game. Was it embarrassing for you?

You are talking about the baggage situation; the game got delayed. First of all, let me say that since the COVID-19 pandemic we have had major issues with international air transport and intra-regional air transport… several of the airlines have struggled to survive and have fewer planes, fewer pilots…because of the Covid protocol (curbs on) commercial capacity, we have to be chartering planes…when you chartered plane is waiting to go, you have to be completely at the airline’s disposal. To cut a long story short, with a large number of players and equipment and baggage just being carried around by teams on international tours, it is difficult to get the right size of equipment in a small area like the Caribbean moving effectively from one country to another and we had a situation where we just had two days in between the last match from Trinidad and to the match at St Kitts and we were supposed to get the airline to cover for us and meet the backlog on overnight Sunday (last week), it did not happen and then we have to do it on Monday morning and then we had to postpone the time. The time was set at 10:30 to meet primarily Asian prime time; unfortunately we had to delay. We had a charter coming in on Monday morning and because of all kinds of issues, it was also short of other bags.

But the way you handled it, the West Indies Board and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) handled it, it was also a story. How did you deal with the mighty BCCI when the Indian team was facing such an awkward situation?

I have to tell you that the Indian team was magnanimous, they were not short of equipment, they were short of clothing and so some players had to share some shirts — you have seen two or three players wearing the same name. The captain (Rohit Sharma) was adamant that they’ve come to the Caribbean to play cricket and that they would play cricket as long as they could.

There is a big debate going on in world cricket, especially in Australia and England, that the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchisees, the IPL money is dominating world cricket and it is taking over cricket in South Africa and it already has taken over the game in the Caribbean. The Kolkata IPL owners, who have put money in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), have helped the game. So, from your point of view, how much do you think the IPL owners are a threat or support from an administrator’s perspective?

Look, at this point in time, it’s a bit too early for us to be predicting what the future holds. Yes, there are some concerns but ultimately what is happening is that the global cricket industry is expanding and we believe in growing cricket, we believe in growing opportunities for players and we believe that in so doing our players will improve, they will get better and they will perform better for their national teams. We have to be sure that development aspects of cricket don’t get lost and that you know the first-class cricket doesn’t get lost and that we can make sure that cricket benefits. The ICC (International Cricket Council) has spoken about putting together a working group, I cannot speak on behalf of the ICC but I am aware that a working group is going to be looking at the possible implications of what’s taking place. I am very optimistic and I believe that ultimately all of the players including the investors in various franchises want what is best for cricket.

In the 70s and 80s, West Indies used to dominate cricket and that’s why everyone wanted to host a West Indian team or tour. And then there was this well-documented decline and now again this T20 format has brought back or say the re-emergence of West Indies as champions. They are the only team to win the T20 World Cup twice. In that sense do you think West Indies as a board has got more bargaining power or is at par with the likes of Australia and England or may be better than South Africa in terms of negotiation?

Look, Cricket West Indies has been in a process of rebuilding, reorganisation and strengthening relations to ensure sustainability and improving the quality of players that we put out. We have a number of halfway projects going on with Under 19 — what we call rising stars — for both girls and boys and we have an Emerging Players Academy we just started we are investing very heavily in redevelopment of our cricket.

A global franchise league is coming up in the UAE and then another T20 league in South Africa. So, the window for T20 is expanding and from that perspective how much advantage is that for your national players and you?

We are also building relations with the BCCI and the other boards. We have over the last few years improved considerably our relationships and so Cricket West Indies is in a better position today and it has been for some time but we are a small player in terms of market, in terms of the commercial market. The reality is that the commercial markets are in Asia, particularly in India, and we have to make sure that our cricket understands that and that we shape ourselves to benefit from such markets even though ours might be a little small.