Board of Directors approves 19 historic changes for development of West Indies cricket
St. John’s, Antigua — The Board of Directors of the West Indies Cricket Board approved a menu of 19 changes for the development of West Indies cricket with a goal of establishing the West Indies team as the number one performing team in world cricket.
The decisions were taken at a meeting in Port of Spain held on Friday March 21 and Saturday March 22.
At a media conference on Saturday, following the meeting, President Whycliffe ‘Dave’ Cameron announced that the Board of Directors approved 19 of the 20 recommendations which formed part of a comprehensive report on the West Indies Cricket System prepared and presented by Director of Cricket Richard Pybus.
The Pybus Report holds ‘West Indies First’ as its guiding principle. The 33 page Pybus Report follows a comprehensive three month, region-wide study which he conducted between November 2013 and January 2014.
Additional notable changes are:
- The West Indies Head Coach to be added to the Selection Panel and will have full voting rights
- The West Indies Captain(s) to be added to the Selection Panel as non-voting members
- Structured year round cricket programme for all West Indies and all First Class contracted players
- 15 full time annually contracted players to each Territorial Board
- Double round matches (home and away) for minimum of ten matches a season for regional First Class teams
- Professional administrative and coaching staff for each First Class team
- West Indies High Performance Programme to cater to the ‘next in line’ West Indies players (effectively the West Indies A Team)
- WICB to appoint Coaching Manager to implement and oversee coaching programme throughout the region
- Implement ‘Elite Coaches Pathway’ programme which will identify current and former players for accelerated coaching training
- Establish West Indies Cricket Captains Council to utilize the cricket knowledge and experience of some of the world’s greatest cricketers, tapping into the cricket wisdom of the former great West Indies Captains to inform cricket policy and implementation