ST GEORGE'S–The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) and the Cari­com com­mit­tee on crick­et gov­er­nance say they have end­ed a "pro­duc­tive" meet­ing where an agree­ment has been reached on "the way for­ward" for West In­dies crick­et.

How­ev­er both par­ties have de­clined to com­ment on the specifics of the agree­ment fol­low­ing their meet­ing which ran for near­ly five hours at the up­scale Spice Is­land Beach re­sort in Grena­da's south­ern tourist belt late Mon­day.

WICB pres­i­dent Dave Cameron and Grena­da's Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Mitchell said de­tails of the agree­ment will be con­tained in a joint press re­lease to be is­sued on Tues­day.

"We al­so agreed that we will have a joint press re­lease from the West In­dies Crick­et Board and of course the Prime Min­is­ter's team," Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell told the me­dia at the end of the meet­ing.

"I be­lieve we have reached a pos­i­tive con­clu­sion which will chart the way for­ward. We will be work­ing to­geth­er with the board and all con­cerned to move West In­dies crick­et for­ward."

Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell chaired the meet­ing, which was al­so at­tend­ed by Ba­hamas Prime Min­is­ter Per­ry Christie, the cur­rent Cari­com chair­man; An­tigua & Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne, and St. Vin­cent & the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves.

All 18 di­rec­tors of the WICB, in­clud­ing Pres­i­dent Cameron and Vice Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Nan­than, along with chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Michael Muir­head and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Ver­lyn Faustin met with the Cari­com Com­mit­tee which al­so in­clud­ed Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ir­win LaRocque.

"I think the meet­ing was very pro­duc­tive. We have agreed a way for­ward and a joint re­lease will be is­sued. So you will get the de­tails very short­ly," said Cameron.

"I think the meet­ing was very pos­i­tive. We have a shared vi­sion. All of us want to see West In­dies crick­et back at the top and we are com­mit­ted to mak­ing this hap­pen."

The two sides were ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss the aban­doned tour of In­dia last Oc­to­ber, the re­form and gov­er­nance of West In­dies Crick­et, and the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Cari­com Com­mit­tee on Crick­et Gov­er­nance and the WICB.

Al­so in at­ten­dance were West In­dies crick­et leg­ends who met with the four Cari­com Prime Min­is­ters ear­li­er in the day at the same venue.

Re­ports from in­side that meet say the leg­ends–Andy Roberts, Sir Vi­vian Richards, Deryck Mur­ray, Wes Hall, Gor­don Greenidge, Sir Gar­ry Sobers and Michael Hold­ing on the tele­phone from Mi­a­mi and the Prime Min­is­ters–were unit­ed on the need for change in the Gov­er­nance struc­ture of the WICB.

"To­day was a very im­por­tant one for West In­dies crick­et in the sense that we had the views and of course clear pas­sion of the leg­ends that have built West In­dies crick­et," Mitchell said.

"They were here with us and ex­pressed strong sup­port for mov­ing this process for­ward and even­tu­al­ly we were able to meet with the board to ex­press the view for the ne­ces­si­ty for change and I think we have reached a con­clu­sion in that re­spect." (CMC)