‘CWI finances worse than you think’

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – The financial situation of Cricket West Indies (CWI) is much worse than previously thought, says newly elected president Ricky Skerritt.

Skerritt, who took over the post after defeating Dave Cameron in elections on March 24, has revealed that due to a lack of resources CWI has not been able to honour all of its financial obligations.

He said however, that the organisation was moving swiftly to address the problem.

“It’s worse than you think. I’m not in a position to speak to numbers, all I can tell you is that we have a significant shortfall in working capital and that is why we have been not up to date with most of our obligations to our creditors,” Skerritt disclosed.

“We have as a result begun to undertake a financial review and in the meantime, we are continuing to raise funds where the funds can be raised and we think that within the next couple of months or so we should be in a much better position than we are now.”

When asked if consideration was being given for a forensic audit to be done on the handling of finances by the previous administration, the president would only say that a financial review was being done.

“We are doing a financial review but I won’t bother to use any terms other than that,” he noted.

Meanwhile, Skerritt defended the decision to use the facilities at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus to host a two-week training camp for the regional side.

The move came under heavy criticism from president of the Barbados Cricket Association Conde Riley, who accused CWI of spending unnecessary money to host the camp there instead of at Coolidge Cricket Ground (CCG) in Antigua, which is owned by CWI.

However, Skerritt contended that holding the camp at UWI was, in fact, a considerably cheaper option.

He said this was due to the fact that the majority of persons attending the camp were from Barbados.

“He [Conde] unfortunately did no homework on that. The use of the UWI facilities at this point in time for what was needed cost us no more than what they would have cost at CCG and in fact, the majority of the team selected for the camp were actually from Barbados so it saved us a tremendous amount of airfares,” Skerritt said.

“Additionally, some of the support staff, three or four of the support staff are from Barbados, so I think what you had was a very angry man ranting without really being too clear on the details.”

The two-week camp recently came to an end and the 15-man squad will head off to take part in a Tri-Nations Series against hosts Ireland and Bangladesh from May 5 to 17, before turning their focus to the World Cup which bowls off on May 30. (CMC)