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Kamal Springer will be going after the post of Board Director in this Friday’s BCA elections.

Springer running for BCA Board Director

When the polls close at Kensington Oval this coming Friday night, one man is hoping to have his head held high as he makes history as the youngest ever Board Director. At 29 years of age, Kamal Springer has thrown his hat in the ring to contest the position during the Barbados Cricket Association’s (BCA) elections as he sets his sights on reconnecting with the stakeholders.

Speaking to The Barbados Advocate ahead of the big race which is set to commence at 6pm on Friday, Springer has hinged his entire campaign on reestablishing linkages with the BCA’s main partners. Listing the key stakeholders as the clubs, schools, government, sponsors and members, he noted that there were just under 2 000 members, 60 clubs and 20 schools that made up part of the audience that the association needed to reach back out to.

A former board member having served from 2013-2017 before serving a two-year term as Director of Resource Mobilisation for the Caribbean and Americas Regional Committee of the Commonwealth Youth Council, Springer is of the belief that there was not any other first-class board in the world that had a member at the age of 22. Since then he has been awarded the 2019 Chevening Scholarship to study a Masters in Business Administration.

Noting that the schools were a point of concern as they were not always fortunate to have a lot of equipment for training, Springer, who went to school at Combermere and played with the likes of Kraigg Brathwaite, Christopher Jordan, Carlos Brathwaite, Shane Dowrich, Jomel Warrican and Roston Chase, said that there was serious dialogue needed to better their situation and ensure a strong talent pool for national, regional and international players.

“I think the BCA needs to bring the schools together more because they don’t do it right now. They don’t bring the schools together to discuss all the issues they are facing with equipment, coaching assistance – everything they need –because that is where we get our youth national players from. So I want us to invest in the schools but I want us to do it in a way that is affordable to us and meets the needs of the schools and the only way to do that is to have a discussion,” he said before revealing that he had been busy for the last few days calling all the schools and clubs – also noting that the clubs needed to be brought together to hear their concerns.

Going on to state that the BCA had an ageing membership with most members over 60-65, he said that new blood was needed not only in the association’s membership but also at club level.

“We need to recruit younger members to carry on the organisation and clubs are going through something similar. So why not have a national initiative where you plot a map and show where clubs are and send them to a website so you can see the club. When they find a club there is a nominal fee to be a member. It helps the community because people can get involved in clubs in their community – be socially active – and young people can get onto committees and add that to their CVs when they are looking for jobs and scholarships. Also, older people have something to get involved in and then the clubs benefit because the membership fees add up,” Springer said.

Although there are other persons in the race, Springer said that his hopes of winning were altruistic as he was running for the betterment of the fraternity. Noting that the board made most decisions surrounding the sport, he said that there were some things that could be done to take the organisation to even higher heights.

“I can say that the organisation, overall, is the best-run in the Caribbean. Trinidad, Guyana, none of them can compare. Financially, structurally, I think we have the most comprehensive staff, everything. But I just don’t think we are connecting with our stakeholders, number one, and number two, I think we are wasting time comparing ourselves to Trinidad and Guyana and so on. I think we need to go well beyond that. We need to go to Australia and find the top first-class team there, the top first-class team in India, South Africa and so on; make the relationships with them, learn from them and find out what they are doing. What is so different? How they are making their money?” Springer added.

Mentioning that the most important tasks at hand were to stop comparing the BCA to other Caribbean territory associations and to reconnect with the stakeholders, Springer said that the greatest hurdles in the way of realising those goals were getting the clubs, schools and members enthused about coming back and attracting younger persons to the organisation. “Recruiting young people is going to be difficult because young people need to be entertained. There is a constant yearning for entertainment from young people now. They are on their phones 24/7; they are streaming something all the time and it is so easy to watch all kinds of international sports. So whatever you do to recruit them has to be something that is very appealing and I think it is going to be difficult to compete with all the other things that they have access to,” Springer said. (MP)

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