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Lennox John, president of the Windward Islands Cricket Association, has revealed that former West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) president Pat Rousseau and vice-president Clarvis Joseph operated at their own pace. John has been the only director of the West Indies Cricket Board to speak out publicly about the resignations of Rousseau and Joseph after the WICB chose to overturn their decision to terminate team manager Ricky Skerritt.

They were way ahead of anybody and never kept anybody informed, John told 92.9 VOB-FM radio.

Imagine they and the chief executive conducted debriefings at the end of the England, Australia and South Africa tours with the manager, coach and captains, but never told the board what was coming out of these debriefings.

John asserted the directors could not leave all the power in the hands of three individuals.

If that is the kind of executive power they want attributed to them, it would have been difficult for us to sit behind and allow it, he said.

We are the ones who are responsible for the cricket at the grassroots level. The WICB has to depend on all the representatives of the various islands to come together to produce the cricket.

The board has been in the habit of being able to nominate and sanction the appointments of people like our manager. We did not expect to find that managers could be fired mid-term without any referral to the directors.

John said the directors had no idea that Rousseau, Joseph and chief executive officer Gregory Shillingford had so much power.

We only got the memorandum of the way things should run at the last meeting.

It certainly shocked all of us when we discovered it was only this three-man committee which could hire and fire and we heard of Skerritt's dismissal without any reference to the board or the exective committee.

John revealed that not even the other members of the executive committee, which comprises three directors along with the president, vice-president, the chief executive officer and the chief financial officer Richard Jodhan, were informed.

© The Barbados Nation