By Neto Baptiste
Minister of Sports, Daryll Matthew, has confirmed that former West Indies Captain and batsman, Sir Richie Richardson, will be appointed Junior Minister within the Ministry of Sports.
Speaking with Observer, Matthew said that although there is no confirmation the knighted former cricketer will be appointed a senator, he can confirm that Sir Richie will join the ranks within the sports ministry.
“I want to use the opportunity, first and foremost, to congratulate and to welcome Sir Richie as the Junior Minister in the Ministry of Sports. It is a decision the government has taken after some consultation over the past few days to bring on someone like Sir Richie to aid in our development of sports and games, particularly at a community level but also to ensure that we have someone with the sort of gravitas and the sort of personality having been such an accomplished athlete himself, who can come on board and support the Ministry of Sports as we continue to develop our young athletes with the view of developing world class elite athletes,” he said.
Sir Richie, who scored 5,949 runs in 86 Tests and another 6,248 in 226 ODI matches, could not be reached for comment.
Matthew, who stopped short of going into details as to how the former player will be utilized, revealed that bridging the gap between communities and the sports ministry is a top priority.
“One of the areas we expect Sir Richie to work along with us is to re-engage the sporting clubs within the communities and to see how we can form a symbiotic relationship between our schools’ programme and our community sports and games programme. It existed several decades ago under the legendary Fitzroy Brann, and it is something we are looking to revive. Given all that is happening in our society with our young people as well, we need to find additional outlets for the,m but it must be done in a more structured way,” he said.
Sir Richie was appointed captain of the West Indies team back in 1991, taking over the role from legendary former captain and batsman, Sir Vivian Richards.
He scored 16 Test centuries and was hugely successful against Australia, hitting nine centuries against them, and scoring his highest score of 194 against India in Guyana in 1989.
Sir Richie is one of four Knighted former International cricketers here in Antigua. He was appointed to the Elite Panel of Match Referees by the International Cricket Council (ICC) on 21 September 2015.
