Time's up for Brathwaite

Roger Brathwaite: too closely linked with the current problems to survive © Cricinfo

A report in the Jamaica Observer has suggested that Roger Brathwaite, the embattled chief executive of the West Indies board, has offered his resignation to Ken Gordon, the board's new chairman.

Brathwaite has been a key figure in the ongoing row between the players and board which has left the region's cricket in crisis, and his opponents have been increasingly critical of his handling of the affair.

While he has been reluctant to speak to the media, on the occasions he has, his comments have sometimes, with hindsight, turned out to be misleading. The way the recruitment of A-team players to bolster the strike-hit squad in Sri Lanka was handled was widely lambasted. It also seems that Digicel are less than impressed with the way Brathwaite has dealt with them.

The pressure is mounting. On Tuesday, the Jamaica Gleaner wrote that Brathwaite "must bear corporate responsibility for the board's failure to produce the quality product that the consumers are demanding and are required to pay for. He has failed his employers by his inability to engineer an end to the damaging impasse. As such, we question his ability to effectively continue in his position."

With the senior board officials also attracting increasing flak for their negotiations of the board's new contract with Digicel in 2004, Brathwaite looks to have lost too much credibility with players and public to be able to survive.

Gordon, a respected businessman with a proven track record, faces a tough challenge in turning round a cash-strapped and unpopular organisation. That task will be made easier if he can dispense of an incrrasingly lame-duck chief executive sooner rather than later.