No election date has been set and no candidates have announced their intention to run but unless something drastic happens Allen Richardson is going to be the next president of the Bermuda Cricket Board.The BCB’s first vice president is the overwhelming favourite to replace current incumbent Reggie Pearman when a vote is held at the next annual general meeting, which has been pencilled in for the second week in October.Richardson may yet face a challenge for the post, and potential rivals don’t even have to make their intentions known until the AGM is officially called.However, those who might wish to replace Pearman should consider one thing, getting elected will be the easy part.Bermuda cricket is in a dark place: Player behaviour on and off the field is worse than it has ever been, gang violence is spilling over into matches, club officials are failing in the most basic of responsibilities, and all this is overseen by a Board that has often preferred to look the other way rather than dealing with the serious issues surrounding the game.Coupled with an upcoming public inquiry into the spending of millions of dollars in taxpayers’ money, and a national team that is on a steep downward spiral, and there aren’t many people who would want to put themselves front and centre of a sport that needs a complete overhaul from the way it is administered to the way it is played.Richardson though isn’t ‘many people’ and while he said some of his friends had questioned his sanity for wanting the job, the man who would be king believes he has ‘80 percent of the solutions for cricket in my head’.Those solutions cover restructuring a domestic game so that it caters for serious cricketers and recreational ones, changing the Board’s ‘management style’ to a more authoratitive one, and revamping disciplinary procedures so that clubs as well as players can be punished for poor behaviour.Passionate about the game, the former St George’s Cup Match player believes that while most people only focus on the negatives of Bermuda cricket, he sees enough positives to think that things could be turned around.“My love for cricket makes me want to do this job,” he said. “I really have a passion for cricket. In spite of so much negativity going on I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot of positives and I see a lot of good things for the future of Bermuda cricket.“Most people that are not even involved in the sport look at one aspect of cricket, one incident that happens on the weekend, or they will look at the national team losing, you know, badly. And they will make a decision that Bermuda cricket is going down the tubes, and there is a lot more to it than that.“A lot of people say to me actually....they wonder if I have got my head screwed on. They wonder whether or not I should even run for this. Who in their right mind, at this time, would want to be president of the cricket Board.“Like I said, they see the negatives, I see so many positives and the positives outweigh the negatives. I think I’ve put myself in a position, I’ve been around cricket all my life, and I’ve taken the last six years to learn the inner workings of what the Board has going on.“I’m very confident. I have 80 percent of the solutions for cricket in my head, the other 20 percent, I know where to go to get the answers. So I think that puts me in good stead for knowing what we need to do in our cricket.”One of the main problems that the next president is going to face is simply working out where to start. While the trials and tribulations of the national team are the very public face of the current issues affecting Bermuda cricket, Richardson doesn’t believe the next president will need to spend as much time fixing that as people may think.“Like it or not our national team are the biggest income drawers we have, even though we are in Division Three,” he said. “They still draw funds from the ICC and if we can get into Division Two then we will get more funds.“We can’t neglect the national team...and I think we’re on the right road. I don’t think I’m going to need as much energy in dealing with the national team, because of the standard of the coach that we have.“We just have to find a way to get our players switched on to wanting to play for the national team. I think we have a good crop of youngsters now that love the game and want to play for the national team, it bodes well.”Improving domestic cricket and the way that the Board functions, both publicly and privately, is a different matter however, and Richardson is convinced that will prove to be far more taxing. Both areas make it in to the top five of issues that he believes need to be focused on right away.“You could name five things right off the bat (that need fixing) just for domestic cricket alone,” said Richardson. “Domestic cricket really needs to be looked at, on ways how we can improve (the standard of) domestic cricket and the behaviours that we’ve seen in our local cricket.“I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a large portion of Bermuda cricketers that are recreational cricketers. They would prefer to turn up on a Sunday, maybe practice once out of the week, have a knock, throw the ball around, that’s it.“Then there are those that are looking to play for Bermuda, are looking to better themselves, I think we have to set a league (structure) up that caters to both those things, and work from there.”Everyone has an opinion on how to improve cricket on the Island, from reducing the top flight to four teams, to instilling a national team selection policy that will only consider players who are playing at the highest level domestically.Richardson is no different, and while he doesn’t favour either of those two options he does acknowledge the need for change.At the moment next season will see the Premier Division reduced to six teams, however this will still involve six traditional clubs all of whom have a mixture of serious and recreational cricketers in their sides. Creating a top flight of serious cricketers is Bermuda’s holy grail.“That’s the key,” said Richardson, “how do you split them. We have to make that top six a bit more attractive to the players, we’ve got to show that playing at that level means something, rather than, you know...we’ve got to make that top division have the drawing power that when you’re playing in that division you notice the difference right away.“Somehow, someway, we need to set that top six alight. If we say that is the elite then we have to run it as if it is elite, whether it’s the quality of the coaching, do we make it mandatory for every one of those coaches that’s in that top six to have at least a Level Two (qualification). There are certain standards that would have to be met to be in that division.“I think it would be difficult to say something to the effect of ‘look, we require you to play in the top six before you can even be considered (for the national team)’. I’d put it this way. If we make it (the league) that attractive we leave the impeteus up to the player.“He has to decide what he would like to do, and I think that would be great because then, if a player is moving (clubs) because he wants to play for Bermuda then you’re going to get a quality person who really wants to play, who has sacrificed to get there.”It isn’t just on the field that Bermuda cricket has struggled this season, off it the rows surrounding the Eastern and Western County competitions have also damaged the sports image, as have the contiued antics of the players.For Richardson, all this can be traced back to a Board management style that has been too hands off for his liking, and in a future Richardson-driven –admininstration the Board would be far more proactive in their role as the ‘sole governing body’ of cricket on the Island.“I don’t think the Board is afraid to get involved, I think we kind of sat back on some of these issues,” said Richardson. “But, we are the governing body of cricket in Bermuda and that means all forms of the game. It works both ways, they have to know and identify that we are the leaders, but then, at the same time, we have to show that leadership, we have to be out in front.“We are the leaders and we have to project that image, as a Board we have got to become more aware of what our parametres are and what we can do.”Something Richardson is –determined to do is improve the discipline among the Island’s players. As chairman of the disciplinary committee he has seen and heard it all over the past few years and has had enough. Any player stepping out of line in the future is liable to end up wishing they hadn’t.“For me, personally, if I’m voted president, there is no in betweens when it comes to issues with an umpire,” said Richardson. “If an umpire, even if he is verbally attacked, if an umpire in anyway feels threatened I will have no sympathy at all with a player. I will deal with that, or I will inform the committee to deal with that, at its most severe. Because the umpire in a cricket match is almost like God, in most parts of the world that is one of the foundations of cricket.“If you look at these guys, umpiring week in, week out, and I’ve been to grounds where the spectators have been horrendous, it’s almost like a cesspool, and the abuse that the umpires take (is dreadful).”It might not just be the players that feel the Boards wrath if Richardson is elected. There are serious discussions going on in the game about starting to punish clubs if their teams misbehave on a regular basis.“That’s something that’s really being floated around within the cricketing fraternity,” said Richardson. ‘People are now saying, and it has been discussed and it will be discussed, ‘do we start taking action against the clubs’.“Do we now start saying ‘if you can’t control these players, if you accumulate so many (disciplinary) points, we’re going to start deducting (league) points from the club’.“That’s something that’s not as far-fetched as some people may think. That’s something that will be discussed as well until we see an improvement within the clubs.”All these changes are for the future. Ideally Richardson would like to see an AGM held next month and a plan to take the –Island forward in place by January. Whatever happens, in –12 months time he certainly wants to see that several things have changed.“I would like to see the umpires to feel like they have our full backing so they can report and feel comfortable reporting foolishness that goes on,” he said.“I would like to see the clubs having at least level two coaches, I would like to see our cricket going in such a direction that the Board, with the assistance of the coach (David Moore), has mapped a plan and I would like to see each club following that plan.“I would also like to see our up and coming younger players beginning to start the process of putting cricket back to where it was as far as Division Two, at least and, by then starting the process of improving their overall game.”That though is for the future, first Richardson has to get elected. However, with no-one challenging him and the job considered a poisoned chalice by many, that may only be a matter of time.