Rowley eager to get discussions going at Caricom cricket conference
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — Trinidad & Tobago (T&T) Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says he is looking forward to the discussions and outcomes of the Caricom conference on West Indies cricket.
Rowley is the chairman of the Caricom prime ministerial subcommittee on cricket, and he has been one of the main proponents of governance reform in Cricket West Indies (CWI).
He will chair the conference that takes place this Thursday and Friday here and which is expected to be attended by “all relevant agencies, organisations, cricketing legends, former and current players, clubs, coaches, and administrators”, including personalities such as CWI President Dr Kishore Shallow.
Titled ‘Reinvigorating West Indies Cricket: A Symposium for Strategic Collaboration and Innovation’, the conference will be jointly hosted by the T&T Government and Caricom, and it will engage topics such as the strategic direction of West Indies cricket, the development of cricket, and cricket and tourism.
“We are hoping that we will have a full blowout on West Indies cricket,” Rowley said during a post-cabinet news conference on Thursday. “Hopefully, what will come from that is some way forward.
“What we are hoping to do, and I am hoping that this conference can show us the way forward to make sure that the best players play for West Indies at all
levels in all the (formats) of the game.”
Rowley drew reference to the news that efforts were being made to coax T&T mystery spinner Sunil Narine to come out of retirement and play for West Indies during the ICC Men’s Twenty20 World Cup in June, in the Caribbean and the United States.
Narine is still actively playing in franchise Twenty20 (T20) leagues around the world, and he made headlines this past week when he slammed his maiden T20 century for Kolkata Knight Riders in the wildly popular and lucrative Indian Premier League.
Rowley said one of the objectives of the conference is to develop a framework that will make it attractive to have the best players always playing for West Indies.
“What is happening is that we do not have a management or support structure that allows that to happen,” he said. “Cricket nowadays is a multi-billion-dollar business, and going through from school to play for West Indies is no longer the single pathway.
“There are 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 when we have our best players at all times to play for West Indies.”
Hosting the event was one of the decisions arising from the 46th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) in February in Guyana.