BRIDGETOWN– Ja­maican busi­ness­man Dave Cameron was yes­ter­day elect­ed pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Crick­et Board, beat­ing in­cum­bent Dr Ju­lian Hunte in a close vote at the An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in Bar­ba­dos.

Cameron, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as vice pres­i­dent to Hunte, won 7-5 to en­sure the change of guard in one of the Caribbean's most pres­ti­gious bod­ies.

His run­ning mate Em­manuel Nan­than, the Wind­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board chief, al­so took the post of vice pres­i­dent af­ter beat­ing Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Joel Gar­ner 8-4.

"I am hap­py and feel ex­treme­ly blessed to be lead­ing this au­gust body this af­ter­noon," Cameron told a me­dia con­fer­ence af­ter­ward.

"As you know, the elec­tion process has been a long one...I trav­elled from Kingston to George­town to en­sure that I was able to ad­dress the con­cerns of our stake­hold­ers.

Cameron, who comes to the post with ten years plus WICB ex­pe­ri­ence, cam­paigned on promis­es to im­prove the board's fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty and in­crease the in­volve­ment of the re­gion's cor­po­rate sec­tor.

He said he was now pre­pared for this chal­lenge as well as that of unit­ing West In­dies crick­et and chart­ing a path for the suc­cess of the re­gion­al team.

"In my man­i­festo I talked about im­prov­ing and build­ing on our im­mense tal­ent, in­creas­ing the rev­enues in the sport...par­tic­i­pa­tion and about unit­ing the re­gion through crick­et," he said.

"And I cer­tain­ly be­lieve this thing called crick­et, and West In­dies crick­et in par­tic­u­lar, is very pas­sion­ate to all of us and I would like to say from the sweep­er on the street to the prime min­is­ters of the re­gion, this is very pas­sion­ate to all of us and with that we take on this very huge task of build­ing the West In­dies team and tak­ing it back to the top where we are ac­cus­tomed to."

The elec­tion of Cameron end­ed Hunte's bid for a fourth suc­ces­sive two-year term and marks the sec­ond ma­jor ad­min­is­tra­tive change in West In­dies crick­et with­in the last sev­en months.

Last Sep­tem­ber, St Lu­cian Ernest Hi­laire stepped down from the post of chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer to take up a diplo­mat­ic post­ing on be­half of his coun­try's gov­ern­ment in Lon­don.

He was sub­se­quent­ly re­placed by Ja­maican Michael Muir­head. (CMC)

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