Barbados: Boards going over our heads, say Umpires (26 July 1999)

26 July 1999

Barbados: Boards going over our heads, say Umpires

The Barbados Nation

The Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) is not the only constituent member of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) at odds with its umpires.

The West Indies Umpires' Association (WIUA) recently complained about the attitude of the boards in Jamaica and Guyana.

The problem is that those two associations were going outside of the panel of umpires agreed to by the board and the association and selecting other umpires.

'We deprecate that move seriously,' WIUA president Rudolph Harper said.

'We hope that the West Indies Board, as it agreed many years ago, would only select umpires from the panel presented by the association.'

But, the local umpires' association is not without its critics. In a letter to NationSport dated May 17, James Maynard, claiming to be a young qualified umpire, protested that the BCUA did not have any plans for its younger members.

'For the past two years, no Barbadian umpire has stood in any international game, not even in Barbados. Yet, you can see that the BCUA has started the cricket season by putting persons who have no future in umpiring at the highest level, in the First Division - a very backward step,' Maynard wrote.

'It is time the BCUA tells some of these umpires to let the younger ones get a chance,' he added.

Source :: The Barbados Nation (https://www.nationnews.com/)