ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has wel­comed Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos Mia Amor Mot­t­ley’s call for greater in­vest­ment in crick­et and her com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of a High-Per­for­mance Cen­tre (HPC) in Bar­ba­dos.

Mot­t­ley’s com­ments came fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the 2026 Caribbean Pre­mier League Fi­nal, where she high­light­ed the im­por­tance of sus­tained in­vest­ment in sport­ing in­fra­struc­ture and con­firmed that fund­ing for an HPC is mov­ing for­ward.

CWI sees the pro­posed fa­cil­i­ty as an im­por­tant step in strength­en­ing the re­gion’s crick­et in­fra­struc­ture and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­ple­ment the HPC cur­rent­ly be­ing de­vel­oped by the re­gion­al body at its head­quar­ters in Coolidge, An­tigua.

CWI’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Chris Dehring said in­vest­ment in high-per­for­mance in­fra­struc­ture has be­come in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant as crick­et’s ma­jor na­tions con­tin­ue to strength­en the en­vi­ron­ments in which their play­ers are de­vel­oped.

“The glob­al crick­et land­scape has changed, and the in­vest­ment be­ing made in high-per­for­mance in­fra­struc­ture, sports sci­ence and re­cov­ery fa­cil­i­ties and tech­nol­o­gy is rais­ing the bar on play­er de­vel­op­ment.

“All con­stituents of West In­dies crick­et need to build that ca­pac­i­ty in or­der to give our crick­eters at every lev­el the chance to prop­er­ly de­vel­op their skills,” Dehring said.

“We there­fore wel­come Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley’s vi­sion and her recog­ni­tion of the need for mean­ing­ful in­vest­ment if the re­gion is to build on its proud lega­cy and cre­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties for the next gen­er­a­tion.”

Dehring said CWI’s own HPC de­vel­op­ment in An­tigua is be­ing de­signed with a sim­i­lar ob­jec­tive; that of cre­at­ing a mod­ern en­vi­ron­ment where play­ers have state-of-the-art fa­cil­i­ties, tech­nol­o­gy, ex­per­tise and sup­port sys­tems re­quired to per­form at the high­est lev­el.

“West In­dies crick­et needs in­vest­ment in mod­ern train­ing and de­vel­op­ment in­fra­struc­ture. These fa­cil­i­ties are key com­po­nents of a re-en­gi­neered play­er pro­duc­tion pipeline and ecosys­tem.

“Our goal is to es­tab­lish a net­work of High-Per­for­mance Cen­tres across the Caribbean, con­nect­ed by tech­nol­o­gy and a com­mon vi­sion. That will be trans­for­ma­tive for West In­dies crick­et and ex­pand the op­por­tu­ni­ties for our play­ers as the glob­al game con­tin­ues to ex­pand,” Dehring said.

CWI said it looks for­ward to con­tin­ued di­a­logue and col­lab­o­ra­tion with stake­hold­ers across the re­gion as the Caribbean ex­plores new op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­vest in the fu­ture of West In­dies crick­et.

CMC