ST GEORGE’S, Grena­da –Pres­i­dent of Crick­et West In­dies (CWI), Dr Kishore Shal­low, led a del­e­ga­tion to Grena­da for a cour­tesy call on Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell. This vis­it marks Pres­i­dent Shal­low’s first of­fi­cial en­gage­ment with Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell fol­low­ing his re­cent unan­i­mous re-elec­tion by all share­hold­er mem­bers for a new three-year term.

Dr Shal­low was ac­com­pa­nied by CWI Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Chris Dehring, who has been in the role for 60 days, and Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Miles Bas­combe.

The vis­it comes ahead of the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed Test se­ries be­tween West In­dies and Aus­tralia, set to take place in Grena­da from Ju­ly 3 to 7, 2025. The se­ries is ex­pect­ed to draw hun­dreds of Aus­tralian vis­i­tors, fur­ther boost­ing crick­et’s pres­ence in the Caribbean.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, dis­cus­sions cen­tred on the con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween CWI and the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da in de­vel­op­ing crick­et at all lev­els. A key high­light of the talks was the agree­ment to for­malise a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) aimed at strength­en­ing crick­et in­fra­struc­ture, grass­roots pro­grams, and op­por­tu­ni­ties for young play­ers in Grena­da.

Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell ex­pressed, “Crick­et plays a vi­tal role in every Grena­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, and we need to in­vest more in its de­vel­op­ment es­pe­cial­ly at the grass­roots lev­el, en­sur­ing that the young play­ers at the pri­ma­ry schools get op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn and play the game.”

He fur­ther added, “Crick­et is more than just a game for Grena­di­ans. It is the one sport that has the pow­er to bring peo­ple to­geth­er for gen­er­a­tions, and so we must in­vest in our young play­ers start­ing from the pri­ma­ry school lev­el.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the com­mend­able strides that Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell and the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da have made in the sport, Dr. Shal­low stat­ed, “The con­ver­sa­tion with Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell reaf­firmed the shared com­mit­ment to nur­tur­ing young tal­ent, en­hanc­ing in­fra­struc­ture, and strength­en­ing part­ner­ships that will pro­pel West In­dies crick­et for­ward. This col­lab­o­ra­tion holds great promise for the fu­ture of our crick­et, and we look for­ward to the pos­i­tive im­pact it will have on the re­gion”.

CWI re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing close­ly with all re­gion­al gov­ern­ments and stake­hold­ers to en­hance crick­et’s growth and glob­al ap­peal.

This vis­it un­der­scores the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ded­i­ca­tion to fos­ter­ing strong part­ner­ships as the West In­dies pre­pares to wel­come Aus­tralia and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al teams in the com­ing months.