Where has all the money gone?

It is extremely difficult to recapture that distinctively pompous, self-righteous, holier-than-thou manner in print, but the same question still needs to be asked: Where has the money gone?

On this occasion, though, Dr Keith Rowley doesn't have to mount a robust defence, nor must Emile Elias respond by calling a media conference to categorically deny the inference of improper conduct on the part of his company.

This time the question is being laid, not in Parliament, but at the feet of two other doctors, namely Julian Hunte and Donald Peters, the president and chief executive officer respectively of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), following a claim by an Indian daily that the WICB have applied for a US$3-million loan from the ICC to keep it afloat.

Responding with surprising alacrity to the allegation that has also been picked up in the regional media, the Board's public relations machinery has sprung once again into action to rubbish the report. Given the PR people were also on the ball in next to no time earlier this week, responding to accusations of incompetence, once again by administrators, over West Indies players' visa requirements for the tour of New Zealand, it is refreshing to know that at least one aspect of the regional governing body seems to be fairly functional.

In categorically denying that the WICB have applied for a loan from the ICC, before explaining that the request was effectively for an advance of the money due to if from next year's rescheduled Champions Trophy, it is clear why the selectors remain loathe to give spinners a long run in the senior West Indies squad: they are all required to toss up the odd googly or doosra to obfuscate issues when the goodly gentlemen over there at Factory Road in Antigua are under fire.

You really have to say it again: these people - the holders of any prominent position anywhere among our united yet diverse territories - must be utterly convinced that the public are all a bunch of idiots, a smiling aggregation of Caribbean fools who blissfully accept the drivel they dispense to us as the unchallenged gospel.

Of course, when there is no concerted expression of national outrage in the face of blatant deceit from Parliamentarians and other public officers, it is probably understandable for those in that myopic public eye to believe that they can get away with almost anything.

Still, for what it's worth, it has to be noted again that the WICB are conveniently evading the fundamental issue when it pretends that we should rest comfortably now in our beds knowing that it was not a "bailout loan" but an "advance" that they are seeking from the parent organisation. That is not, or ever was, the point.

The point, should anyone still care, is why would the WICB be in a position in the first place where, as they admit in their own media release and as good old Max Senhouse used to say in plugging his furniture store, they need the money so badly?

What does this say about an administration entrusted with the affairs of West Indies cricket that it finds itself in such a financial bind a mere 18 months after hosting a World Cup tournament that returned record reported profits in excess of US$50 million?

Okay, so even if you take into consideration disbursements from that sum to territorial boards or any others in line for compensation in keeping with the terms and conditions of the host agreement with the ICC, has all that money gone already?

What does Ken Gordon have to say about this, even as he is considering the offer to head a farce and out of place government-appointed committee on media standards? Didn't he, as outgoing WICB president in July of last year, state that he was leaving the organisation with a measure of satisfaction that it was on a sound financial footing after so many year of being swamped by a rising tide of debt?

As I understand it, the Board's persistent and consistent blundering in relation to last month's Stanford Super Series resulted in the Texan billionaire withholding the US$3.5 million to which the WICB were entitled from the US$20-million jackpot.

And, of course, they have had to foot a considerable legal bill in trying to alienate their own sponsors, Digicel, from an event to which any two-by-four attorney would have advised that the telecommunications company was entitled to.

Is it any wonder then that the billionaire boss of Digicel, Denis O'Brien, was suggesting two weeks ago in Barbados that the hierarchy of the WICB needs to be replaced for West Indies cricket to make any meaningful progress?

Not that they must necessarily call the tune, but when you have alienated Irish and American benefactors and are once again near bankruptcy so soon after a significant financial windfall, not to mention presiding over the continuing decline of the on-field product, only blind subjects of a naked emperor will remain silent.

Which brings us back to the fundamental question: Where has the money gone?