Cricket support for WI Pro League

PROPOSALS for the establishment of a West Indies Professional Cricket League are currently being discussed by some of the regional game’s major stakeholders at the Dr Joao Havelange Centre of Excellence, Macoya. The two-day seminar-discussion, organised by Dr Trevor Alleyne, Deputy Dean of UWI Faculty of Medical Sciences, involving guests from Barbados, Guyana, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago started yesterday.

Dr Alleyne has been the co-ordinator for cricket at the St Augustine Campus for the past three years but his love for the sport goes back to his youthful days in his native Barbados where he played with and against some of the leading players of the 1970s and 1980s. But his major challenge at this stage is to get a WI Professional League established in the region. He has sent documents and proposals to all the Prime Ministers of Caricom-member countries, many past West Indies Test players including the legendary Sir Gary Sobers, Andy Roberts and Joel Garner plus other cricket officials and aficionados.

Dr Alleyne has held discussions with Alloy Lequay, former President of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board, and other local cricket officials. And to move the programme further, he has  received support from FIFA vice-president Jack Warner, who agreed to underwrite the cost for hosting the discussions at the Centre of Excellence. Former WI Test player Deryck Murray delivered the feature address yesterday and started the ball rolling in relation to the projections of getting the league started. Dr Alleyne disclosed that the “discussions were fruitful but there will be more deliberations before any decisions are taken in relation to the proposed Pro-League.”

Among the participants, yesterday, were Lennox John (president of the Windward Islands Cricket Association), Roland Butcher (UWI Cave Hill campus Sports Director), Ronald Mack (UWI Cave Hill Campus representative), Lennox Hunte (Guyana Cricket Board representative), Franklyn Stephenson (former WI player), Suruj Ragoonath (TTCB’s representative), Dinanath Ramnarine (West Indies Players Association’s president) and Dr Allen Sammy (former secretary of the TTCBC). The two-day session ends today.