ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Af­ter serv­ing as chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at Crick­et Wick­et In­dies (CWI) for the past sev­en years, John­ny Grave will step down from his role at the end of Oc­to­ber.

The an­nounce­ment was made on Mon­day in a press re­lease by CWI, which thanked Grave for his con­tri­bu­tion as CEO.

Pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low said Grave had made a “last­ing im­pact” on crick­et in the re­gion.

“John­ny’s ef­forts, par­tic­u­lar­ly through chal­leng­ing times such as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, as well as suc­cess­ful­ly host­ing three World Cups in­clud­ing, the Women’s World T20 in 2018, the Men’s Un­der-19 Crick­et World Cup in 2022 and re­cent­ly, the Men’s T20 World Cup, have made a last­ing im­pact on CWI.

“Ap­pre­cia­bly, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has tak­en many pos­i­tive strides dur­ing his tenure. A stand­out achieve­ment is the ac­qui­si­tion and full own­er­ship of the Coolidge Crick­et Ground (CCG), which is now our head­quar­ters and home to our men’s and women’s Acad­e­mies,” Dr Shal­low said.

“On be­half of the Board and all at CWI, I ex­press heart­felt thanks to him for the un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment and lead­er­ship over the past sev­er­al years.”

Grave was named CEO of CWI by for­mer chair­man Dave Cameron back in 2017, fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Michael Muir­head.

The Eng­lish­man said while he was leav­ing the po­si­tion in search of a “new chal­lenge”, he had thor­ough­ly en­joyed his tenure at CWI.

“It has been an ab­solute priv­i­lege to have been CEO of CWI since Feb­ru­ary 2017. Hav­ing just host­ed a suc­cess­ful T20 World Cup and de­liv­ered sig­nif­i­cant sur­plus­es for CWI for the third con­sec­u­tive year, I do feel it is the right time for me and my fam­i­ly to seek a new chal­lenge,” Grave ac­knowl­edged.

“I have re­ceived tremen­dous sup­port from so many peo­ple since be­com­ing CEO and I’d like to thank every­one, es­pe­cial­ly the staff and the play­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the dif­fi­cult pan­dem­ic, for their trust in me and their com­mit­ment to West In­dies crick­et.

“My fam­i­ly and I have loved liv­ing in An­tigua and will leave with many spe­cial mem­o­ries hav­ing watched our young chil­dren grow up here. I have put every­thing in­to this role, and now is the right time for some­one new with fresh en­er­gy to lead the or­gan­i­sa­tion and con­tin­ue this im­por­tant work and build on the strong foun­da­tions that are now in place,” he added.

CWI said it would be “be ini­ti­at­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­cruit­ment process to se­lect the next CEO” and promised that a thor­ough and trans­par­ent se­lec­tion process would be un­der­tak­en.

Dr Shal­low fur­ther stat­ed that “CWI is poised to de­liv­er the new strate­gic plan and en­ter a new era of gov­er­nance. This tran­si­tion re­flects our com­mit­ment to adapt­ing and in­no­vat­ing in re­sponse to the evolv­ing land­scape of crick­et.”

CMC