ST JOHN’S, Antigua (CMC): The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) says improving the quality of pitches around the Caribbean remains a top priority ahead of the third season of the WICB Professional Cricket League (PCL).
Twenty-five curators from around the region are attending a two-day intensive workshop at Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua, facilitated by International Cricket Council (ICC) pitch consultant, Andy Atkinson.
The workshop, yesterday and today, focuses on issues such as pitch allocation, rotation, maintenance, draining, outfield management and offers technical guidelines for the participants.
“The workshop is timely,” declared WICB’s director of cricket, Richard Pybus.
“This workshop should serve to assist our curators around the region with additional information on how to maintain and improve their respective pitches.”
Atkinson, an Essex-born pitch consultant who has been with the ICC since 1998, has toured extensively to cricketing nations globally.
He was last in the Caribbean region during the World Cup in 2007 and the ICC World Twenty20 in 2010 and returned for a workshop in September 2011.
“In an effort to improve pitches it is important that we have Andy with us,” said Pybus.
“We are taking steps, as we promised, to improve what we currently have so the pitches respond favourably to all formats of the game.”
WICB head curator, Kent Crafton, is among participants as well as representatives from St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Guyana, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, University of Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda.
The territorial boards are currently preparing their teams for the start of the four-day Professional Cricket League (PCL), season three, which is set to bowl off Friday, November 11.