(Guardian.co.tt) – Cricket West Indies (CWI) vice-president Dr Kishore Shallow says that the administration has achieved six areas out of their 10-point plan for the development of Caribbean cricket in just seven months.
In a wide-ranging interview with Guardian Media Sports on Monday, Shallow said: “We campaigned on a 10-point plan and on being elected the president of the board, Ricky Skerritt told all that they must put their shoulders to the wheel and get the work done. We have done that to a great extent and now I can report to you that we have achieved six of the 10 points in just a matter of seven months.”
Shallow, 33, who is the youngest cricket president for any national cricket association, has done a lot to develop cricket in St Vincent as president of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Cricket Association (SVGCA). He said there is still a lot of work to do regionally but the board is upbeat by the success so far as it works towards getting total confidence back in the system.
“One of the things that we have vowed to do is to improve relations and this we are doing at pace. The president, independent director Mike Findlay and I have already started our meetings with Caricom to mend fences there and to get them on board as far as development is concerned. “
Shallow, a graduate of Walden University in Business Administration and Finance, added, “We have met with Dr Ralph Gonzalves, who is chair of the Caricom sub-committee on cricket and also the Prime Minister of St Lucia Allan Chastenet who is chairman of Caricom and it has been wonderful.
“Our meeting with Dr Gonzalves lasted all of five hours and at the end of it, we were able to get across to him that there is a bigger role for Caricom to play in the development of our cricket. We want to get the governments of the region to assist us in terms of our grassroots initiative. We see the future of our sport there and we need to make a major thrust in that direction.
Shallow, who said his passion is Caribbean development and business management, was also very happy with the fact that the board was able for the first time to bring on stream a selection policy and also install three selection panels.
“As we continue to better relations with all stakeholders, our task force that was put in place to come up with a selection policy decided to go to the fans. They sent out questionnaires that the fans filled out and more often than not, they wrote that they were not happy with our selections in the past,” Shallow said.
“The task force came up with a solid policy and this has been used to get three panels in place to select our different teams. We now have separate selection panels for the men, women and youth teams.
“As we move forward we will continue to make decisions that align with our 10-point plan on which we campaigned. We directors of the board are all working very hard to ensure that there is a brighter tomorrow and from where I sit at the moment, we are confident in getting there.”