PM Rowley to chair conference with Caricom members, CWI heads

THE Prime Minister will chair a conference on April 25 and 26, alongside executive members of Cricket West Indies and other key stakeholders, to improve the sport’s managerial structure and ensure the best regional players are always selected for international tournaments.

Dr Rowley made the revelation at the post-Cabinet briefing on April 18, and remains optimistic the two-day conference allows a “full blowout on West Indies cricket”.

This conference will host several Caricom heads, inclusive of Barbados PM Mia Mottley, cricket legends such as Clive Lloyd among others, player representatives, business people and representatives from the Caribbean Premier League T20; all intent on charting a positive way forward for Windies cricket.

Rowley estimated 75 attendees from various aspects of cricket. CWI president Kishore Shallow arrives in Trinidad on April 21.

“I am hoping that this conference can show us a way forward, to make sure that the best players play for the West Indies at all levels, in all the various genres of the game.” Rowley said.

“What is happening is that we don’t have a management or support structure that allows that to happen. Cricket nowadays is not a multi-billion dollar business. Going through from school to play for West Indies is no longer the single pathway.

“There’s a whole plethora of pathways, some of which take our best players away from the field of play when we need them. So we have to come up with some kind of arrangement where we get our best players at all times to play for the WI.”

Rowley was appointed chairman of a Caricom Prime Ministerial sub-committee on cricket in July 2023.

He added that West Indies cricket has a lot of “frayed ends” and that cricket has become a “very complicated matter now”. Finance, Rowley confirmed, plays a primary role in modern cricket, and he believes the maroon “are not in the ball park”.

He said, “I’m hoping that it will stimulate some interest in supporting West Indies cricket in a way that it has not been supported and clarified, and of course the whole question of who owns West Indies cricket will certainly surface again, and how it is managed and so on.”