PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — Trinidad & Tobago Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said he had a more optimistic outlook on West Indies cricket following the election of Ricky Skerritt and Dr Kishore Shallow as president and vice-president, respectively, of the sport’s regional governing body, Cricket West Indies (CWI).

Dr Rowley warned, however, that there was plenty work ahead for the Skerritt-led administration for the Windies to avoid being relegated to the second tier of the game.

“The ICC is go­ing to cre­ate two di­vi­sions of crick­et, and West In­dies may not find it­self in the up­per ech­e­lons of Test crick­et,” said Dr Rowley. “We’re go­ing to find our­selves with Afghanistan, Hol­land, and Kenya.

“What we are look­ing for now is a best prac­tice mod­el to re­build a Test team that has de­clined. What was hap­pen­ing to West In­dies crick­et is that we were not able to put that lad­der down in that pit to climb out of it, and I’m hop­ing now that Sker­ritt pro­vides that lad­der so that we climb out of it. We can­not con­tin­ue to have a C-Class horse run­ning an A-Class race.”

West Indies are currently ranked eighth in the Test rank­ings, ninth in the One-day In­ter­na­tion­als, and sev­enth in the Twenty20 Internationals although they are currently the reigning World champions in that format.

About the CWI election result which saw Skerritt and Dr Shallow unseat incumbents Dave Cameron and Emmanuel Nanthan, Dr Rowley said he was ex­treme­ly hap­py about the outcome.

“I think it opens the door for us to bring about the im­prove­ments that we an­tic­i­pate,” he said. “It made my day.

“Where Dave Cameron is con­cerned, what hap­pened in In­dia, in any man­age­ment struc­ture, that is when things should have come to a head,” he said, referring to the players dramatic walk-out on the 2014 Tour of India.

“To have es­caped that and be­come in charge of a hege­mo­ny af­ter that told me that West In­dies crick­et was on the wrong track.

“You could not have cre­at­ed an en­vi­ron­ment like that, cre­at­ed those li­a­bil­i­ties for fu­ture earn­ings, and be im­preg­nable.”