KINGSTOWN, St Vin­cent – Crick­et West In­dies pres­i­dent des­ig­nate, Dr Kishore Shal­low said long-last­ing suc­cess on the field in the sport in the Caribbean is strong­ly linked to find­ing fi­nan­cial re­sources to fund de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.

Shal­low, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the St Vin­cent & the Grenadines Crick­et Board and the cur­rent pres­i­dent Wind­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board of Con­trol, will be con­firmed in the post of CWI pres­i­dent at the 24th an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing on Sat­ur­day in An­tigua.

He is un­chal­lenged for the po­si­tion af­ter Ja­maica Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent and fel­low CWI di­rec­tor, Wil­ford “Bil­ly” Heav­en with­drew from the con­test last Fri­day, clear­ing the way for Shal­low to re­place in­cum­bent Ricky Sker­ritt, who did not seek a third term.

Shal­low said all the pres­i­dents of CWI of the re­cent past tried to in­vest in the grass­roots of the sport in the Caribbean, but they have had lim­it­ed suc­cess be­cause fi­nanc­ing de­vel­op­ment was cost­ly.

“The chal­lenge is al­ways the fi­nance,” he said dur­ing a TV in­ter­view with the hosts of the Sports­Max Zone on the Caribbean ca­ble TV chan­nel, Sports­Max.

“In my man­i­festo where you see com­mer­cial and mar­ket­ing, I re­al­ly be­lieve that greater em­pha­sis must be placed on that. Once we can gen­er­ate more rev­enue, it can be in­ject­ed al­most di­rect­ly in­to our crick­et de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.”

Shal­low gave the ex­am­ple of fund­ing that has come in­to the ter­ri­to­ries of the Wind­wards through a se­ries of in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-spon­sored Ten10 tour­na­ments.

“The rev­enues we have gen­er­at­ed from that, all of the coun­tries that have had a T10 tour­na­ment that has all been a part of the process of im­prov­ing the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards, and you would have seen our Un­der-17 team win,” he said.

“You have seen im­prove­ment in our se­nior team this year, that is be­cause the na­tion­al boards have found some mon­ey to in­vest in their de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, so when I say struc­ture, I mean find­ing the funds, en­sur­ing there is a frame­work that the coun­tries un­der­stand, and they im­ple­ment it si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.”

Shal­low, who has been on the CWI board for the past five years and was elect­ed to the post of vice pres­i­dent three years ago, said he has had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ob­serve West In­dies crick­et very close up and it has pre­pared him to as­cend to the post of pres­i­dent.

“I am quite con­fi­dent af­ter the dis­cus­sions I have had over the last few months es­pe­cial­ly with my col­leagues on the board and oth­er key stake­hold­ers across the re­gion, I think peo­ple, by and large, are ready to pool their re­sources to­geth­er and get every­one on that same wave­length,” he said.

“We all have the com­mon in­ter­est of want­i­ng to see West In­dies crick­et im­prove, and I think that once we can ap­proach the whole lead­er­ship and ad­vance­ment in that way, whether it is ideas, fi­nance, and oth­er key com­po­nents, and hav­ing that in­clu­sive en­vi­ron­ment I think we will be well on the path of an im­proved West In­dies team.”

Shal­low said West In­dies were about 10 to 20 years be­hind oth­er teams in the world, and it was im­por­tant for CWI to find mod­ern, best prac­tice meth­ods to ad­vance the sport in the Caribbean.(CMC)