With Dr Kishore Shallow set to end his term as Cricket West Indies (CWI) president in 2028, Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) President Dr Donovan Bennett says he’s unlikely to run for the post, citing age as a key factor.

The presidency of the region’s governing body will be up for grabs in a few years, after Shallow announced he would not be seeking re-election.

Shallow, who has been in the role since 2023, was recently named St Vincent and the Grenadines’ minister of tourism and maritime, after being elected as a Member of Parliament. He said he will see out his current terms as president so as to complete the reforms needed to improve West Indies cricket.

Bennett, who is a director on CWI’s board, is eligible to be a presidential candidate but doesn’t believe age is on his side.

“I would want to think that a younger person should be given that role,” he told the Sunday Observer. “I’m not young anymore — by any stretch of my imagination — [so] that would be a job for a younger person. If they ask me to stick around to give a guiding hand, yes, but not to actually take up the mantle.”

Bennett, who has spent nearly four decades serving in various roles in Jamaican cricket, says his main focus is the development of the sport.

“I don’t have a particular ambition for anything, I just want to be given an opportunity to serve. I was a director of the JCA going back for umpteen years. I left the JCA [but] I was encouraged to come back, [and] I came back. I never aspired to be president,” he said.

“Even when I became president, I did it more out of a sense of duty and the fact that, with my level of experience, I could probably turn things around. But I wouldn’t tell you that it’s a job that I was hungry for and in any way had an appetite for. I was asked to do a job and I decided to do a job based on what I thought my capabilities were, but I didn’t go seeking that job.”

The last Jamaican to serve as CWI president was Dave Cameron, who did so for six years before he was voted out in 2019.

Bennett, though, believes the best person for the job should run, regardless of nationality.

“You can run into a lot of problems if you start doing a rotational system, as has been championed by certain quarters. You could run into problems because you might very well find yourself in a situation where you’re [stuck with] a totally incompetent person and a totally dishonest person who’s from a particular territory and just because of the rotational process, he’s trusted. I’m not for that,” he said.

“When it comes to West Indies cricket I am not a Jamaican, I’m a West Indian. I don’t get ecstatic about Jamaicans being on the West Indies team; I am happy, but I wouldn’t say I’m ecstatic. I wouldn’t want to see a Jamaican in the West Indies team when there is somebody from another territory who is better than our person. I look at things from a West Indian perspective; and whoever from the Caribbean or who is one of our shareholders who puts the best person up for a particular job at a particular time, I think should be given that opportunity.”

The candidates for the presidency are likely to be confirmed in 2028. Vice-president Azim Bassarath, president of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board, could be a front-runner for the job.

Dr Kishore Shallow, Cricket West Indies president .