GEORGE­TOWN – For­mer Test cap­tain and stroke-mak­er, Ramnaresh Sar­wan, has praised Crick­et West In­dies pres­i­dent, Ricky Sker­ritt, for mak­ing the “hard de­ci­sions” since com­ing to of­fice a year ago, and wants to see him con­tin­ue the roll-out of his agen­da.

Sker­ritt, a for­mer tourism min­is­ter in St Kitts and Nevis, stunned three-term in­cum­bent Dave Cameron last March in elec­tions in Ja­maica, to as­sume the top po­si­tion in CWI.

“When he came in it was a dif­fi­cult time, not on­ly the fi­nan­cial chal­lenges they had to deal with but so far you got to give him the props where some­one de­serves props,” Sar­wan said.

“He has been do­ing a good job and has had to make hard de­ci­sions and it’s good to see when you have to make harsh de­ci­sions you make them in the right way.

“So I would like to see him con­tin­ue in the path they are go­ing so in the com­ing months they could get some of the things they have been work­ing [on] and they have promised come to fruition.”

Sker­ritt took con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sions with­in a month of as­sum­ing the pres­i­den­cy, ax­ing then West In­dies men’s head coach Richard Py­bus and his staff, and re­plac­ing the en­tire se­lec­tion pan­el at all lev­els in a bold shake-up.

Af­ter over­see­ing a failed World Cup cam­paign in June, all-rounder Ja­son Hold­er was sub­se­quent­ly re­placed as one-day cap­tain by Kieron Pol­lard who al­so as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Twen­ty20 unit from Car­los Brath­waite.

Sar­wan was one of the for­mer Test play­ers asked by CWI to work with the men’s side as a con­sul­tant, when he helped with prepa­ra­tion for the tour of Ire­land last May.

“My role with the West In­dies team was more as a men­tor, to of­fer ad­vice to the play­ers and help them the best way I could,” said the for­mer right-han­der who av­er­aged 40 from 87 Tests with 15 hun­dreds and 42 in 181 One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als.

“I was a kind of a men­tor to the play­ers and tried my best to as­sist them in any tech­ni­cal ways and with any short­com­ings where I thought they could im­prove in.”

A pro­lif­ic run-scor­er at the first class lev­el where he amassed over 13 000 runs with 33 hun­dreds, Sar­wan said it was his hope that the do­mes­tic cham­pi­onship could be im­proved along with the fa­cil­i­ties.

“I have not re­al­ly looked at [the] re­gion­al [lev­el] in a while, but based on the feed­back I am get­ting is that the stan­dard has dropped a bit,” he ex­plained.

“Like I have al­ways said be­fore, once you have a very sound and strong first class lev­el you would ob­vi­ous­ly be able to go on to make the West In­dies team and to be bet­ter equipped to per­form at the In­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. I think that is one area we have to look at.

“Hope­ful­ly we would be able to have bet­ter fa­cil­i­ties in the Caribbean so that play­ers will im­prove and be ready to play at the high­est lev­el.”

CMC