Business View Caribbean - November 2016 59
ed in the right direction. “This year, we won three Under
19 titles, the women’s T20, and the men’s T20,” she
says. “In the next two years, we’d like to do the same.
We’d also like to win the World Cup for the Over 50
championship. So as the competition comes up over
the next years, we’d like to win and go up in the rank-
ings – say be in the top three.” In order to fill the upper
ranks of the sport, the WICB starts it players young.
With its corporate partners, it sponsors Kiddy Cricket
in the schools and Youth Development programs at
the community level, throughout the Caribbean.
Cricket is not yet a popular sport in the U.S. - it’s pri-
marily played by migrants from the West Indies on both
the east and west coasts, at the amateur and club
level. Over the years, several attempts at forming pro-
fessional enterprises have failed due to lack of inter-
est and/or finances. But Muirhead believes that could
change. “We have been having preliminary talks with
NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) about
introducing cricket in schools and colleges in the U.S.,”
he says. “There is a governing body in the U.S. called
USACA – the United States Cricket Association. So, we
do have a presence in the U.S., which we are trying to
develop. We see that as our biggest emerging market,
and we have been seeking to promote the game much
more in the U.S.”
Muirhead adds that the WICB is also talking with the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) about the pos-
sibility of adding cricket to the 2024 Games. The first
and last time cricket was played in the Olympics was in
