Vin­ode Mam­chan

At the West In­dies Crick­et Board's meet­ing last week­end, pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) Dr Julien Hunte sang the prais­es of out­go­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of the WICB, Dr Ernest Hi­laire. Hunte said the sport is on a bet­ter foot­ing as a re­sult of the tenure of Hi­laire who is prepar­ing to demit of­fice at the end of Sep­tem­ber af­ter serv­ing the full term of his three-year con­tract. Hunte said: "Un­der Dr Hi­laire's tenure as CEO the for­mal foun­da­tion­al strength of West In­dies crick­et has been set in place and West In­dies crick­et will ac­crue ben­e­fits for gen­er­a­tions to come. Over­all, it is be­yond dis­pute that West In­dies crick­et is on bet­ter foot­ing for the in­volve­ment of Dr Hi­laire." A re­lease from the WICB praised Dr Hi­laire for in­tro­duc­ing a num­ber of new mea­sures in­to the sport in the re­gion. They in­clude the es­tab­lish­ment of the Sagi­cor High Per­for­mance Cen­tre (HPC); two new tour­na­ments-Caribbean Twen­ty20 and WICB Un­der-17 Tour­na­ment; High Per­for­mance Pro­grammes for U-15; U-19 and Women's team; and the in­tro­duc­tion of the Pro­fil­er In­jury Man­age­ment Sys­tem.

A fit­ness pro­gramme, a grass­roots Youth De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme and a Play­er Re­la­tions Pro­gramme are among new ini­tia­tives in­tro­duced by Dr Hi­laire, the re­lease said. "Dr Hi­laire gave the board his per­son­al com­mit­ment to man­age the lay­ing of the foun­da­tion of change at the WICB to en­sure the fu­ture strength of the game." "At the time of Dr Hi­laire's ap­point­ment the board re­quired a chief ex­ec­u­tive who would be un­yield­ing and de­ter­mined; who would have had to face wide­spread pub­lic crit­i­cism and re­vile­ment as tough de­ci­sions need­ed to be made to set West In­dies crick­et on a course of pos­i­tive change," Dr Hunte added. How­ev­er, while Dr Hunte cred­its Dr Hi­laire with the es­tab­lish­ment of the HPC, it is not so. This was done by for­mer pres­i­dent of the WICB, Trinida­di­an, Ken Gor­don. In his farewell speech, Gor­don said: "Now I turn to the foun­da­tion we must put in place. Over the past two decades all the ma­jor crick­et­ing na­tions of the world, oth­er than the West In­dies, have es­tab­lished crick­et acad­e­mies. That is where they work on de­vel­op­ing the whole crick­eter: the play­er, his mind and the man, the type of de­vel­op­ment we have been talk­ing about for 22 years, ac­cord­ing to Clive Lloyd. It is long over­due that we broad­en the hori­zons of our play­ers and lift them above learn­ing on the job.

"Now fi­nal­ly it is go­ing to hap­pen. The Acad­e­my will op­er­ate on the ba­sis of a hub, with five spokes. The hub will be in Bar­ba­dos and it is pro­posed that the spokes be in Ja­maica, Lee­wards, Wind­wards, T&T and Guyana. "The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the WICB have al­ready signed a MOU which makes the fa­cil­i­ties at the 3Ws ground in Bar­ba­dos avail­able to the WICB. Sim­i­lar as­sur­ances have been giv­en by the gov­ern­ments of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da for the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um and with the T&T gov­ern­ment for the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um. We are pleased to ad­vise that a Caribbean com­pa­ny has now agreed in prin­ci­ple to the spon­sor­ship of the Bar­ba­dos hub for the first five years and this is like­ly to be con­firmed in a mat­ter of days. We al­so hope to be in a po­si­tion to short­ly an­nounce the spon­sors of the spokes in the oth­er five coun­tries." The com­pa­ny Gor­don speaks of is Sagi­cor who signed on for the first five years and to­day we have the Sagi­cor High Per­for­mance team play­ing in Bangladesh. Dr Hunte al­so cred­its Hi­laire with the com­ing on stream of the re­gion­al Un­der-17 crick­et se­ries. This is not the case again, as this was the ini­tia­tive of Trinida­di­an Sports Pro­mo­tions com­pa­ny All Sports Pro­mo­tions and was played in To­ba­go ear­li­er this year.