TORON­TO, Cana­da – Guyana-born Shiv Per­saud is the new Pres­i­dent of Crick­et On­tario hav­ing been elect­ed at a re­cent Spe­cial Meet­ing.

Per­saud, who pre­vi­ous­ly served in the po­si­tions of sec­ond-vice pres­i­dent and sec­re­tary, re­placed long-stand­ing crick­et of­fi­cial Mo­hammed Shaikh.

He al­so serves as Pres­i­dent of the Scar­bor­ough Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (SCA) and the On­tario Soft­ball Crick­et League (OS­CL).

Speak­ing af­ter his re­cent elec­tion, Per­saud said his aim was to bring sta­bil­i­ty and pro­grammes that will be sus­tain­able over the long term.

He said he was look­ing for­ward to “rais­ing the aware­ness of Crick­et On­tario and the path­ways that ex­ist, at­tract­ing more spon­sors and im­prove the stan­dards at every lev­el, in­clud­ing coach­ing and of­fi­ci­at­ing.”

Ques­tioned on the re­cent set­backs fac­ing the be­lea­guered Crick­et Cana­da, Per­saud said, “Our fo­cus will be putting the best ef­fort for­ward to bring trust and trans­paren­cy in On­tario, re­as­sur­ing all of our play­ers, of­fi­cials, spon­sors and stake­hold­ers.

“Com­plet­ing our crick­et cal­en­dar for the sum­mer for our youths, women, girls and se­niors in prepa­ra­tion for na­tion­al tour­na­ments are our key pri­or­i­ties. We will be work­ing dili­gent­ly as a board and with our com­mit­tees,” Per­saud said.

CMC