ST JOHN’S, Antigua (CMC) — Another national association is being chastised by its Government for the way it has been handling the administration of cricket in their country.

Minister of Sport, Senator Winston Williams said he will no longer allow the Antigua Cricket Association (ACA) to hold the sport to ransom.

Senator Williams said government officials had written the ACA and made several attempts to engage the association, but they are yet to get a reply.

“I think it was June or July of last year that I wrote to the cricket association outlining exactly what I would, as a minister of sport, and as a government, how we would want to work with the association and to date we haven’t had a response,” he said in an article appearing in the Antigua Observer newspaper on Friday.

“I am declaring that as the minister of sport, I will not allow this situation to continue where our national sport (is concerned), to simply erode our gains in the past and dash the hopes and dreams of our young people,” he said. “I don’t know that we can sit back and afford for this charade to go on.”

The newspaper reported that the ACA, which is currently headed by Leeward Islands and West Indies Cricket Board director Enoch Lewis, has not held elections for more than five years and a number of clubs are yet to receive prize money due to them, after winning several championships spanning a number of years.