PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – President of Cricket West Indies (CWI) Ricky Skerritt has defended the decision to use the facilities at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus to host a two-week training camp for the regional side.
The move came under heavy criticism from president of the Barbados Cricket Association Conde Riley, who accused CWI of spending unnecessary money to host the camp there instead of at Coolidge Cricket Ground (CCG) in Antigua, which is owned by CWI.
However, in a recent interview, Skerritt contended that holding the camp at UWI was, in fact, a considerably cheaper option.
He said this was due to the fact that the majority of persons attending the camp were from Barbados.
“He [Conde] unfortunately did no homework on that. The use of the UWI facilities at this point in time for what was needed cost us no more than what they would have cost at CCG and in fact, the majority of the team selected for the camp were actually from Barbados so it saved us a tremendous amount of airfares,” Skerritt said.
“Additionally, some of the support staff, three or four of the support staff are from Barbados, so I think what you had was a very angry man ranting without really being too clear on the details.” The two-week camp recently came to an end and the 15-man squad will head off to take part in a Tri-Nations Series against hosts Ireland and Bangladesh from May 5 to 17, before turning their focus to the World Cup which bowls off on May 30.
