CRICKET West Indies (CWI) top executives, Ricky Skerritt and Dr Kishore Shallow, are lauding the introduction of new technology since taking over the reins of leadership just over a year ago.

In their wide-ranging one-year review, released during last week, President Skerritt and Vice-president Shallow referred to several instances where the technology was used for greater effectiveness in spreading the work of the CWI.

Among them was the hosting, jointly with UNICEF, of a regional Sports Science Workshop in Trinidad and Tobago in December 2019 to update on the latest sports science and medicine research, technological advances, and the implementation of best practices at CWI.

The review pointed out that “In keeping with our commitment to keep all stakeholders informed, press conferences to announce the new selection system, new white-ball captain and other developments, were streamed live on YouTube with the aim of reaching stakeholders in real-time.

Other significant achievements, the review said, were the recruitment of a new Broadcast Production partner, Whisper, to ensure that coverage of West Indies cricket is of the highest possible economic, player-centric, and cultural value; procurement of a new clothing producer, Castore, with the most modern and comfortable fabric and design quality and the greater effectiveness achieved in fitness testing and fitness results.

These results included: Out of 118 regional players tested in March 2019, only 43 players met the minimum fitness standard; out of 130 players tested ten months later, in January 2020, 102 have met the minimum fitness standards, including all centrally contracted Test and white-ball-only players.

The review also alluded to the fact that CWI partnered with USA-based weather company, Accuweather, to utilise their unique technology for weather updates on website ahead of cricket matches and as a commercial drive to enter the USA market. “This is breaking new ground for CWI and will need capacity-building if we are to optimise.”

The review referred to the employment of an experienced West Indian, Richard Berridge, as a selection-data analyst, specifically to service the information needs of all selection panels and also that of a world-renowned data analyst, AR Srikkanth, to bring additional technological expertise to aid decision-making and performances of the senior men’s team as they strive to move up the rankings.

The duo boasted that during the one-year period, the use of best-practice accounting and human resources management software saw the improvement in the financial and human resources management, respectively; the implementation of remote meetings for CWI standing committees while they are currently exploring a comprehensive diagnosis of the Information Technology infrastructural needs of the entire organisation and the improved use of social media communications in general, with fans and other stakeholders, including as follows: FaceBook – which saw followers increasing by 3.2 per cent; impressions and engagements increased by 178 per cent and 87.6 per cent respectively; video views on Facebook surpassed 112 million in the past 12 months and Twitter – 121k new followers, an increase of 37 per cent. “We passed the one million subscriber milestone and increased subscribers by 990 000 in the past 12 months. (Frederick Halley).