Dr Kishore Shal­low, pres­i­dent of Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) re­mains dis­ap­point­ed that the re­gion­al team did not qual­i­fy for the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) World Cup.

The pres­i­dent shared his dis­ap­point­ment at the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) awards cer­e­mo­ny at Cen­ter Pointe Mall Au­di­to­ri­um in Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day and he be­lieves that the West In­dies should be qual­i­fy­ing di­rect­ly for the event.

Shal­low, who took over the lead­er­ship of re­gion­al crick­et in March said, “I mean we should not even be hap­py we have to play in the qual­i­fiers. That’s the truth and that is what we’re hop­ing to avoid in the fu­ture.”

Ac­cord­ing to the 39-year-old Shal­low, there were a se­ries of events through­out the year which con­tributed to the West In­dies not be­ing able to qual­i­fy for the World Cup with the lack of in­fra­struc­ture be­ing num­ber one along with lack of sys­tems and pro­grammes to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of the team.

“We have to strength­en our de­vel­op­ment path­way and I sus­pect that once we in­vest in de­vel­op­ment part way, once we get our fa­cil­i­ties right be­cause the play­ers need prop­er in­fra­struc­ture to de­vel­op right if we can ad­just these things now,” said the Pres­i­dent, who is a for­mer head of the Wind­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board of Con­trol, and the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion.

The CWI calls out to the gov­ern­ments to help pro­mote and sup­port the sport of crick­et with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of prop­er sys­tems and struc­tures through­out the re­gion.

“It’s im­por­tant that we get the sup­port and we col­lab­o­rate with them and they have all ex­pressed will­ing­ness to come on board and sup­port West In­dies crick­et and re­alise you know very good fa­cil­i­ties that our play­ers could train and de­vel­op their skills well,” said Shal­low, a uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate in the field of fi­nance.

Due to dif­fi­cul­ties in sched­ules, crick­eters are un­able to par­tic­i­pate in first class crick­et. Cur­rent­ly white ball play­ers are seen to have lacked first class crick­et ex­pe­ri­ence there­fore things are be­ing put in place to make it eas­i­er for these play­ers to play more first class crick­et.

The pres­i­dent men­tioned that “in tal­ent, we are sure not out of tal­ent, but what we have to en­sure that we don’t lose them af­ter un­der 19 and so on. And I think once we do that we’ll have a good, you know, group of play­ers that could rep­re­sent as well as in Test crick­et and al­so have a, you know, a strong group.”

De­spite hav­ing in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers and still not be­ing in the World Cup this year, wel­com­ing the next year, the CWI fo­cus­es on en­sur­ing it will be a great tour­na­ment with a glob­al au­di­ence to make the re­gion proud and a win in the next World Cup.