Dave Cameron is sceptical about how West Indies cricket can get out of its current financial crisis. And the former president of Cricket West Indies is not against the Caribbean team withdrawing from international cricket to make a point.
Cameron made the comments on the Mason and Guest radio show in Barbados on Tuesday.
CWI recently announced a series of cost-cutting measures because of its current cash-flow problems, including a 25% cut in the salaries of contracted international players and the reduction of the contracts of franchise players to seven months and the pausing of the regional Men’s Super50 tournament and the Women’s T20 Blaze series.
Earlier this year, the world governing body ICC agreed a US$12,.82 million loan to CWI.
Cameron said, such a loan from the ICC was not a new arrangement and had happened “multiple times.”
But he said the current circumstances of CWI made recovery more complicated.
“For the first time, the deficits, I’m not sure how you get out of this if you’re not in any of the World Cups; you’re not hosting any of the World Cups, I’m not sure if there is a path to get out of this situation with revenues from broadcasts going down. That’s a huge item that’s now addressing us,” Cameron said. “If you don’t have a big market for sponsorship then you are in trouble.”
Cameron who went out of office after losing elections to Ricky Skerritt in 2019, claimed the regional body’s current financial issues were linked to how it had used the profits from hosting the 2007 and 2024 50-over and T20 World Cups, respectively.
“There are two mistakes we made, and I said if I had the opportunity we would have changed,” he said. “We had a surplus in 2007 World Cup and we made an error of distributing it to the territories – massive error. And I think we did similar again after the 2024 World Cup in the Caribbean.
“What we should have done is invested those funds and then spent the revenues from that money. We would still have had reserves today.”
However, Cameron also again hit out at the imbalance in how the ICC distributes it’s revenue.
He recalled that in 2016 when West Indies were both the Men’s and Women’s T20 world champions, “we weren’t able to move our revenue needle.”
And referring to the ongoing white-ball series between the West Indies and India, he claimed: “India, they are probably going to make north of 100, 200 million dollars on the series and it’s costing West Indies cricket to go and play in India. It just doesn’t make sense…. You can’t run a business where no matter whether you are the best team in the world you can’t improve your revenues. That’s not a business, the model has to change.”
The former CWI boss said CWI had to do more than make a case for help.
“We need to be more forceful about it, and if it means withdrawing from the cricket I would be as dramatic as that as to say, well India, play yourself if you’re not willing to share the resources with us… That would get everybody understanding how serious the situation is.”
As things stand, however, Cameron only saw more tough times ahead because of the CWI cuts.
“Once you start cutting back on your development programmes, then where do you find players to go forward? So if you think the cabinet is bare now, wait for three, four years from now.”
