Baksh hits out at West Indies board

Vaneisa Baksh,a journalist and administrator, has accused the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) of not giving women's cricket the respect it deserves, The Nation newspaper reported.

Baksh, who also served on the Cricket World Cup 2007 board, told a conference for senior Caribbean journalists on Friday that the board had lagged behind in following the ICC's mandate to merge the male and female boards.

"The WICB has never bothered to pay any mind to women's cricket," she said in the meeting at Port-of-Spain. "I know this because over the years there have been several episodes where simple courtesies are not even observed. Letters to the board from the regional body remain unanswered. Requests for meetings are ignored.

"The only time in the board's history that it paid any attention to the status of women in the realm of cricket was during the tenure of Wes Hall as president."

Baksh has written on this topic before. "Going by the slow and painful progress women's cricket has made, one cannot but attribute it to certain entrenched attitudes. Whispered innuendos that our women in white should be dressed up (or down) are attaining the status of strategic advice."

But she isn't entirely without optimism of the future of women's cricket, if the support is given. "From my own eight-year campaign to persuade the Queen's Park Cricket Club to exclusive female membership, I am aware of what the odds are. But I am aware, too, of the positives: of, how given half a chance in terms of access to training and development, what the women in white in West Indies can deliver."

And she also realizes that the board is not without its supporters of the game. "There are powerful voices trying to disperse the gloom," she says. "Michael Seepersaud, chief cricket development officer at the WICB speaks of the need for a paradigm shift and of treating women's cricket not as an appendage but an integral part of Caribbean cricket."