The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) con­firmed Ernest Hi­laire as its new chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) yes­ter­day. The WICB said in a press re­lease that Hi­laire's ap­point­ment be­comes ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 1.

Hi­laire re­places Don­ald Pe­ters, who de­part­ed the post in Ju­ly, and he will im­me­di­ate­ly con­front the con­trac­tu­al cri­sis be­tween the WICB and the play­ers' union that has crip­pled West In­dies crick­et.

"The WICB is fac­ing an ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult chal­lenge as it seeks to es­tab­lish a new frame­work for the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et in the re­gion and Dr Hi­laire is ex­pect­ed to be piv­otal in shap­ing and man­ag­ing the trans­for­ma­tion which is re­quired," WICB Pres­i­dent Ju­lian Hunte stat­ed in Sun­day's press re­lease.

Hi­laire be­comes the fifth CEO of the re­gion­al crick­et board in the last nine years, af­ter Gre­go­ry Shilling­ford, Roger Brath­waite, Bruce Aa­nensen, and Pe­ters.

"The Board of Di­rec­tors is pleased to wel­come Dr Hi­laire as CEO and looks for­ward to a pe­ri­od of sta­bil­i­ty and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al growth and de­vel­op­ment un­der his lead­er­ship," Hunte added.

Hi­laire has had a very close re­la­tion­ship with West In­dies crick­et, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the last few years, when he served as CEO of World Cup St Lu­cia.

He had played an im­por­tant role in the de­vel­op­ment and pre­sen­ta­tion of St Lu­cia's bid to host match­es in the 2007 ICC Crick­et World Cup and was pre­vi­ous­ly ap­point­ed tour­na­ment di­rec­tor of next year's Twen­ty20 World Cup to be staged in the Caribbean.

He was al­so a for­mer Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of Youth and Sports in St Lu­cia, un­der the Ken­ny An­tho­ny Ad­min­is­tra­tion, dur­ing whose tenure the Beause­jour Crick­et Ground in Gros-Islet and the George Od­lum Sta­di­um in Vieux Fort were con­struct­ed.

Hi­laire is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and pos­sess­es an MPhil. (Mas­ter of Phi­los­o­phy) in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, and a PhD from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.

The post was re­port­ed to have at­tract­ed more than 30 ap­pli­cants from the Caribbean, the Unit­ed States, and from as far way as New Zealand. (CMC)