ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua – In a ma­jor push to strength­en the pipeline of Caribbean crick­et tal­ent, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has kicked off a sec­ond round of es­sen­tial coach­ing cours­es across the Lee­ward Is­lands and St Vin­cent.

The ini­tia­tive is a crit­i­cal part of CWI’s strat­e­gy to build a deep and qual­i­fied pool of coach­es, prepar­ing for the restart of pri­ma­ry school and com­mu­ni­ty grass­roots pro­grammes.

The train­ing will equip lo­cal coach­es with the skills need­ed to nur­ture the next gen­er­a­tion of stars.

The ses­sions be­gan on Thurs­day (Oc­to­ber 2) at the Coolidge Crick­et Ground in An­tigua & Bar­bu­da.

The pro­gramme will now move through the re­gion, with stops sched­uled for Montser­rat (Oct. 5), the British and US Vir­gin Is­lands (Oct. 7), St. Maarten & An­guil­la (Oct. 10), and a fi­nal ses­sion in St. Vin­cent on Oc­to­ber 30th.

CWI’s Di­rec­tor of Crick­et, Miles Bas­combe, em­pha­sised the long-term im­por­tance of the in­vest­ment in coach­ing.

“In­vest­ing in coach­ing ed­u­ca­tion at this ear­ly stage is es­sen­tial to build­ing a sol­id foun­da­tion for the growth and fu­ture sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the sport in the re­gion,” Bas­combe stat­ed. “By equip­ping coach­es with the right tools and knowl­edge, we are cre­at­ing a more in­clu­sive and sus­tain­able crick­et path­way.”

Bas­combe high­light­ed that flag­ship de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes like the Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed (RBL) Five for Fun Crick­et and the Girls Un­der-16/19 Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Crick­et Hubs will di­rect­ly ben­e­fit from this new­ly trained co­hort of coach­es.

The cours­es are be­ing led by two high­ly qual­i­fied coach­es from Trinidad & To­ba­go, Bren­don Ram­lal and Ke­sha­va Ram­phal. Both Lev­el 3 cer­ti­fied and with ex­ten­sive back­grounds in ed­u­ca­tion, they bring over a decade of ex­pe­ri­ence in age-group crick­et de­vel­op­ment.

In a key move for play­er safe­ty, CWI man­dat­ed that all par­tic­i­pat­ing coach­es com­plete the on­line UNICEF Child Pro­tec­tion Course and a vir­tu­al Crick­et Safe­guard­ing Work­shop be­fore be­gin­ning their train­ing. This en­sures every coach is pre­pared to pro­vide a safe and sup­port­ive en­vi­ron­ment for young play­ers.

This lat­est se­ries of cours­es builds on a suc­cess­ful first round that en­gaged over 150 par­tic­i­pants in ter­ri­to­ries in­clud­ing Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, and Trinidad & To­ba­go, sig­nalling CWI’s sus­tained com­mit­ment to re­build­ing the sport from the ground up.

CMC