The Board of Di­rec­tors of the West In­dies Crick­et Board, ap­proved an an­nu­al de­vel­op­ment grant for the Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges Pro­gramme at its last meet­ing in Bar­ba­dos. The grant, to the tune of US$50,000, is sim­i­lar to what is re­ceived by the six Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Boards on an an­nu­al ba­sis from the WICB for the pur­pos­es of aid­ing the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et in the var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries. The CCC pro­gramme has be­come in­te­gral to the de­vel­op­ment of West In­dies crick­et since it was con­ceived in 2007. The CCC par­tic­i­pates in the WICB se­nior men's tour­na­ments - Re­gion­al 4 Day, Su­per50 and Caribbean Twen­ty20. "The CCC pro­gramme, in a very sig­nif­i­cant way, aids us in en­sur­ing that some of our best tal­ents do not have to com­pro­mise their ed­u­ca­tion for crick­et or vice ver­sa," WICB Pres­i­dent, Dr Ju­lian Hunte said.

"The pro­gramme has be­come one which is at the fore­front of glob­al crick­et as suc­cess­ful­ly merg­ing for­mal high­er ed­u­ca­tion with crick­et," Dr Hunte added. "We have seen a num­ber of play­ers spend time in the CCC pro­gramme and then grad­u­ate to in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el or re­turn to their re­gion­al teams where they con­tin­ue to com­pete at a very high lev­el, and af­ter they would have achieved aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly as well. Most no­tably among them is Miles Bas­combe," ob­served Dr Hunte. "We have seen too the pro­fes­sion­al­ism and strong com­pe­ti­tion of­fered by the CCC in our var­i­ous tour­na­ments where they are quick­ly de­vel­op­ing in­to a force to be reck­oned with and can no longer be treat­ed light­ly by the oth­er re­gion­al sides," Dr Hunte not­ed.