Come Ju­ly 1, the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) will be re­struc­tured. This is the word from pres­i­dent of the board, Dr Julien Hunte. The St Lu­cian made the com­ment dur­ing his ad­dress at the open­ing of the Sagi­cor West In­dies Crick­et High Per­for­mance Cen­tre at the Er­rol Bar­row Cen­tre for Cre­ative Imag­i­na­tion at the Cave Hill Cam­pus in Bar­ba­dos on Sun­day night. Hunte said that the WICB is very se­ri­ous about tak­ing the game for­ward in this re­gion and they are will­ing to make changes to see this hap­pen. "Last year af­ter a brain­storm­ing ses­sion by the di­rec­tors of the WICB, we de­cid­ed to bring in a Hu­man Re­source Con­sul­tant to look at the man­age­ment of West In­dies Crick­et.

Some­one start­ed that process in No­vem­ber of last year and now we can say that we have the re­port be­fore us and we are go­ing to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions with­in it. Sir Hilliary Beck­les prin­ci­ple of Cave Hill Cam­pus said that one of the ini­tia­tives the board has bold­ly tak­en to bring West In­dies crick­et back to the top is bring­ing on stream the acad­e­my. He said for years the talk has been around con­cern­ing the set­ting up of an acad­e­my and while all the pres­i­dents of the board from 1998 were very in­ter­est­ed in get­ting it, cur­rent pres­i­dent Julien Hunte re­al­ly ran with the project and brought it to fruition. "I must say though that Julien Hunte re­al­ly was the man that made this come through. He saw that it was tak­ing a very long time in com­ing and he pushed for it to be com­plet­ed soon. He man­dat­ed CEO of the WICB Ernest Hil­iare to see to the needs of this project and it was done."

Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos David Thomp­son was al­so present and he showed prais­es on in­sur­ance gi­ants Sagi­cor for com­ing on board to make the project a re­al­ty. "I must say well done to Sagi­cor for com­ing on board this ef­fort. With­out your in­volve­ment it would not have been pos­si­ble and it is great to see that you are not on­ly look­ing to sup­port crick­et in Bar­ba­dos which is so dear to us but al­so the wider re­gion." Sagi­cor has de­cid­ed to spon­sor the Acad­e­my for five years. The first in­stall­ment of 15 play­ers are al­ready in train­ing at Cave Hill and af­ter three months they would go back to their homes be­fore re­turn­ing lat­er in the year for an­oth­er three-month stint.